Some comments during an insightful and entertaining time with Ariel's boss, Simon Saunders, didn’t make it into the interview we recently published but deserve an airing.
This one has been intriguing me most: “Slightly tongue in cheek, I say we could make a chauffeur-driven limousine. It’s a long way from an Ariel Atom and we might only make four a year, but hopefully it’d be the best-driving limo you could buy because it’s designed for the job.”
Saunders was emphasising that Ariel could make a variety of vehicles, rather than being entirely serious. But in an age where start-ups routinely arrive touting a new supercar or a lightweight sports car – in what are congested, established markets – only to disappear once the limited budget runs out a few months later, I am longing for someone to try it and make it wilfully different.
I imagine it’d be electrically powered, with a near-silent and small range-extending engine pocketed somewhere far from the occupants. I imagine air suspension and an aluminium spaceframe, although not necessarily with the long bonnet – or any bonnet – necessitated by a large-capacity V8 or V12. In terms of materials and design, I imagine it being wildly different inside, doing what only concept cars have so far been allowed to do.
Yes, it would be more expensive to develop than a plastic-bodied sports car and, sure, you wouldn’t sell them by the hundred and it would cost a lot to assemble. But it would cost rather a lot more to buy, too.
“If you do what the big manufacturers can’t, daren’t, won’t, or aren’t interested in, that’s our niche,” says Saunders. Ariel already has other things than a limo to concern itself with. But I’d love to see someone try to make it work.
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