Is
Ariel the coolest carmaker on the planet? It's increasingly looking that way. They only make one actual car, the Atom, but it's a belter. And it's going to be joined in the range by this, the Nomad.
OK, so it's not a car in the traditional sense. Yet it's still somehow recognisably an Ariel. And an outrageously fun-looking one, at that.
It's described by Ariel as "a modern buggy designed for the rough and tough of the wild but just as home in the city". The thought of commuting in a Nomad strikes us as a strangely irresistible one.
It's shorter than a Renault Twingo, while at 670kg, it's around 200kg heavier than an Atom, but it's still little more than half the weight of a Ford Fiesta.
At its heart is a Honda-sourced 2.4-litre four-cylinder VTEC engine, here tuned to produce 235bhp at 7,200rpm, while serving up 221lb ft of torque, which is more than you'll find in the bonkers-fast BAC Mono.
The result is a 0-60mph sprint of 3.4 seconds and a 136mph top speed. We can't possibly describe the engine as well as Ariel puts it in its own bumf. "Be it crawling over rocks, executing that Scandinavian Flick at full throttle or just powering away from the lights, this engine delivers." Has there ever been a more exciting sentence in car advertising material?
