The Engineer Car Review: Ariel Nomad

Step into the Ariel Motor Company’s Somerset HQ and the first thing you’re greeted by is a 3HP Quadricycle built by the firm’s namesake in 1901. In some respects there are parallels to its modern counterparts sat on the opposite side of the foyer. Both feature a lightweight construction, minimal bodywork and a mid-mounted petrol engine. But that’s where the similarities end.

The original company is sometimes credited with having created the first commercially available bicycle. Although best known for its later motorcycles, it was also an early pioneer of the British car industry, with an Ariel Simplex listed among the vehicles on the grid for the first ever race at Brooklands in 1907. However, car production ceased in 1925 and the motorcycle business closed its doors in the late 1960s.

The name was revived in 1999 when former Porsche and Aston Martin designer Simon Saunders set about pursuing his dream of creating a lightweight, minimalist sports car. That design would go on to become the Ariel Atom and it has been evolving into progressively wilder iterations ever since (including one particularly bonkers example with the company’s own 3-litre V8, loosely based on two four-cylinder motorcycle engines grafted together).