CAR CHOICE

No, your eyes are not deceiving you! Ariel have indeed gone completely bonkers and fitted a bespoke V8 engine to the already madly fast, and madly exciting Ariel Atom. The Atom is a refined vehicle that actually works on the road, allowing it to represent the best track day experience. This new V8 version takes crazy to new heights thanks to minimal weight and 500HP – that may not sound like much, but when you consider that the car weighs as much as a postage stamp on a diet, things start to get very extreme indeed.

The Ariel Atom is sort of like a lean, mean, sophisticated bare knuckle boxer that has mastered all forms of martial arts. Lean and mean because of its no frills, barely-there construction; sophisticated because it’s clever; and bare knuckled because it’s raw and uncensored. Something like a Gallardo Superleggera, which can be described in the same context as a WWE Superstar – all drama, flash and very capable - can still be considered slightly under talented in comparison to the Atom. As powerful, but three times heavier than this new Atom V8, anything in the Gallardo’s league, and in fact higher, would flounder against it on pretty much any given stretch of road or track.

We haven’t seen anything new from Caterham recently as the British manufacturer seems to he content with just producing continuation models of their iconic Lotus Seven models.

All that, however, was bound to change and now Caterham has announced that it has plans of unveiling a completely new model at the start of 2011. Details are still sketchy at this point, but Caterham has made it known that their new model is going to signal “the beginning of a new dawn for the Company, but one that remains true to the lightweight, minimalist DNA of the legendary Seven."

According to Caterham, this new model is going to be powered by a new in-house engine - the next-generation Caterham Motorsport engine - and is going to be built alongside the Seven. There’s no telling what kind of car this is going to be because Caterham is keeping their cards close to their chests. Fortunately, we won’t have to wait too long before we see the cat make its debut at the Autosport International Show in Birmingham, England on January 13, 2011. That’s about a month away so the wait really isn’t that long.