Ariel Atom allowed but Caparo isn't?

PeteRoy

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Apr 20, 2007
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Israel
Why Top Gear removes Caparo T1 even when it's road legal?

Ariel Atom is as comfortable as the Caparo it seems so why is Ariel Atom stays on the board?
 
As they said, their rule is not whether it is road legal, but whether it can go over a standard British speed bump. Which the Caparo can't, while the Ariel can. Simple.

And if you saw the show, shouldn't you have been listening aswell? As in listening to Clarkson saying exactly what I've just posted.
 
because the atom has enough ground clearance to get over a small bump or something...

edit: beat me to it...

anyway I?m pretty sure you couldn?t drive the caparo on the ring, as you?d tear up the bottom pretty quick...
 
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anyway I?m pretty sure you couldn?t drive the caparo on the ring, as you?d tear up the bottom pretty quick...

I think it'll do that by itself on any flat road.
 
That's kind of a lame rule. Since when is the Power Lap Board about practicality?
 
because the atom has enough ground clearance to get over a small bump or something...

edit: beat me to it...

anyway I?m pretty sure you couldn?t drive the caparo on the ring, as you?d tear up the bottom pretty quick...

The Radical SR8 got around in the quickest time, and that is almost a full inch lower to the ground. The Caparo has a ground clearance of 2.8in and the Radical is 1.97in.
 
That's kind of a lame rule. Since when is the Power Lap Board about practicality?

They've always said, that if you can't buy/use a car on the road it can't go on the board, like the AM DB9 racer for example, or the Renault F1 car. If you cant go over a speed bump, then you can't really take it out of your garage and go out for a drive.

I'm sure you can but that's the logic they're going by.
 
The boy are right the caparo is not a proper road car, it can't go over speed bump, the undertray always falls off it blows up in a ball of flames every 5 minutes, and u need a racing driver suit and helmet everytime u want to go to the shops. In that sense the atom is a lot more practical.
 
They've always said, that if you can't buy/use a car on the road it can't go on the board, like the AM DB9 racer for example, or the Renault F1 car. If you cant go over a speed bump, then you can't really take it out of your garage and go out for a drive.

I'm sure you can but that's the logic they're going by.

Yeah, when you think about it, it's actually quite a good way of seperating race bred from road breds.

I live in London, so if you'd have that T1 here, you wouldn't be able to get it out the garage (seriously).
 
...and the Radical was taken off the board immediately as well. I'm not sure what your point was.

Ford Prefect mentioned the Nurburgring, I wasn't talking about the Top Gear Track. He said he you probably couldn't drive the Caparo around the 'ring because of the low ground clearance. But the car that got the quickest time was even lower.
 
I'm not entirely sure that an Atom would get over a speed bump. While the nose would clear, I'm pretty sure the car would actually high center on the tub which hangs pretty low to the ground. If you look at this image where I've intentionally skewed the exposure to try and highlight it (since there's shadow and a black tub, but you can see it) there just isn't a lot of ground clearance there.

atom-light.jpg
 
I know that the Atom can get over a speed bump, as one of the owners on the Atom forums took it cross country and he seemed to do fine. I dont think any of the other owners on there have issues with speed bumps.

http://forum.atomclub.com/
 
You can see here that it's actually quite tall. And it's tall enough to get over a sleeping policeman by the looks of it.

009.jpg
 
There's a Youtube video which shows a bunch of atoms driving through London I believe and they go over several speed bumps with no problems.
 
It may look tall in that photo, but that's because the whole car is pretty tiny. The center of the wheel hub is just about 12" off the ground. The bottom of the tub is just about 5" off the ground, max. That's 1" of clearance off the standard speed bump assuming zero compression.

Trust me, you'll pound the heck out of it if you're not very very careful...and even then. Marginal.

I know that when I drove one I got one wheel into a surprisingly low depression in the paddock and the tub touched down.

Steve
 
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