Ariel

Ariel Motor Company was originally founded as Solocrest in 1991 by Simon Saunders, a former designer for Aston Martin and Porsche, before being rebranded as Ariel in 1999 to honor a historic British marque. The company's breakthrough came with the introduction of the Atom in 2000, a car that dispensed with traditional bodywork in favor of a visible steel-tube exoskeleton, prioritizing lightness and structural rigidity. This design allowed the Atom to achieve performance figures comparable to supercars at a fraction of the cost, quickly establishing Ariel as a serious player in the track-day market. Throughout the 2000s, Ariel refined the Atom through several iterations, most notably establishing a technical partnership with Honda to use their i-VTEC engines, which provided the reliability and high-revving character suited to the brand's philosophy. In 2014, the company expanded its portfolio by launching the Ace, a bespoke motorcycle powered by a Honda V4 engine, demonstrating the versatility of their engineering approach. This was followed in 2015 by the Nomad, an off-road focused vehicle that applied the exoskeleton concept to a long-travel suspension setup designed for rally-raid style driving. Currently, Ariel continues to push the boundaries of low-volume manufacturing from its base in Somerset. The introduction of the Atom 4 in 2018 marked a major leap in performance with the adoption of the turbocharged Civic Type R engine. In 2024, the company launched the Nomad 2, transitioning to Ford-sourced powertrains for their off-road line, while simultaneously developing the Hipercar, an ultra-high-performance electric vehicle featuring micro-turbine range-extender technology.