The Ariel Atom is the only car to ever destroy Jeremy Clarkson’s face:
However, despite its looks, this car isn’t the Ariel Atom:
No, this car is a home-built Ariel Atom clone that’s the end result of a gearhead with a garage and a dream. (And 800+ hours of work.)
Featuring stainless panels from old appliances, black body panels from an ancient kayak and an old doghouse, a throttle pedal from salvaged parts that were the result of a dumpster dive at a local engineering firm, and the k20a3 engine out of a wrecked RSX, it’s also an eco-friendly car that shows that recycling can be quick too.
Specs come in at 4.5 seconds to 60, and 35+ MPG, so it’s not bad in the performance department either.
A home-built dream car pieced together from scraps lying around the house?
I would gladly trade ten years off of the end of my life to be Jeremy Clarkson for a day.
Why?
Because the man gets handed the keys to some of the most exclusive cars in the world, and then gets paid to drive them. Hard.
We’re talkin’ tire smoking, opposite locking, pedal to the floor hard; and then some. Top Gear must have to have a separate budget just for the rubber they go through each episode.
Bugatti, Ferrari, Porsche and Lamborghini; if it costs more than a house, then chances are, Jeremy has been behind the wheel.
Which is why I can’t wait to pick up a copy of his new film, Supercar Showdown. In it, Clarkson road and track tests some of the most expensive supercars currently roaming the roads. Models include the Ferrari 430 Spider and 599 GTB Fiorano, Lamborghini Gallardo and Murcielago Roadsters, Bugatti Veyron, Audi R8, Porsche 911 GT3, Radical SR3, Aston Martin V8 Roadster and Ascari A10.
If a laundry list of the automotive elite isn’t enough to tempt you, then just check out this:
SSC might only have one model, but what they lack in variety, they make up for in heart. That’s because SSC wants to challenge the big boy and take on the Bugatti Veyron for the title of World’s Fastest Production Car. Their pride and joy, the Ultimate Aero TT, isn’t just some kit car with a prayer though; it’s a low-slung beast with power to spare.
Features include 1183 horsepower coming from the twin turbo V8, rear wheel drive, carbon fiber body, 14” brakes, a .357 drag coefficient, and a one-year, unlimited mile warranty (no, really). The end result is a rocket to 60 in 2.78 seconds, a quarter mile time of 9.90 seconds at 144 mph, 1.05 gs on the skidpad, and the ability to go from 0 to 100 to 0 again in 11.66 seconds.
So how did it do on its high speed test run? Not too bad considering the run was cut short by snow! The driver managed 230 mph with just 56% of 6th gear’s throttle, and felt that there was “a lot more to go”. There better be, because the current record is 253 mph (as verified by Top Gear). I’ll be sure to keep you up to date on the progress that gets made towards the record, but until then, make sure to:
Check out the site and ogle a few of the pictures
Catch the car on Spike TV’s Bullrun
Stand in front of it if Eddie Griffin gets behind the wheel.
Top Gear, the very popular British automentary (television documentary about autos), stands by the motto “Go big or go home”.Recently Richard Hammond, one of the show’s presenters, was seriously injured after crashing a rocket-powered car at over 300 MPH.
Now, their latest debacle was an attempt at building and launching a space shuttle out of a Reliant Robin (a car not found in the US). The goal was to launch the car, and then glide it back down to the ground via remote control, though that’s not exactly what happened. (Skip to about 2:29 left in the video if you just want to see the good stuff).
This is what Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond’s jet-car looked like in the middle of him crashing it at 288 mph. It’s amazing that he survived at all, let alone that he has almost fully recovered from the crash that happened only five months ago. Time to hit Vegas with luck like that.
I’ve gone skydiving, and it was fun, and it scared the piss out of me, but I’d imagine that after a while you would just get used to that feeling and it would no longer be fun to just jump out of the plane and float around for a while. Once that happens, if you want to keep getting that nice little adrenaline fix, you’ve got to find some way of getting that scare the piss out of you feeling back, otherwise you might as well just be grocery shopping with a parachute on. So what are you options? One is to speedfly, a method of descending a mountain on skis where you skim along, just above the ground and hundreds of sharp, jagged rocks, often touching the ground for a brief while only to lift off again and shoot out over a cliff, flying along at breakneck speeds with just enough reaction time to realize that you’re about to die just before you actually do. Interested? Check out Fran çois Bon and Antoine Montant’s speedfly descent down Mount Eiger in first person movie mode:
If that doesn’t get your blood flowing, how about jumping out of a plane, only to land in the back seat of a moving car? Top Gear attempted to do just that, parachuting into the back of a Mercedes Benz at speed:
So if the whole falling to the ground because your chute didn’t open possibility just doesn’t do it for you anymore, fear not, there’s sure to be something else you can try with a chute on that will require a new set of undies afterwards.
Gran Turismo, a PlayStation series, sells itself as The Real Driving Simulator; a game that has always been synonymous with realism and true to life physics. It does seem pretty real (sometimes frustratingly so) when I play it, so I have often wondered just how true to life the game really is. Thankfully, Top Gear had the same wonderings, and decided to do a little test to see if they could match the time they can do in the game with the time they can do on the same track and in the same car as in the game, but in the real world. Watch and see:
Because the man gets handed the keys to some of the most exclusive cars in the world, and then gets paid to drive them. Hard.
