Ariel Atom 4R makes a ludicrous 400 hp and 369 lb-ft

The people at Ariel will never get enough. The Ariel Atom 4 you can buy right now in the U.S. is fashioned from just enough parts to make a car road-legal and not one part more, so it weighs about 1,310 pounds. The driver and passenger barely get better accommodations than the turbocharged 2.0-liter K20 Honda four-cylinder engine behind the seats — that's no insult to the Atom but praise for the philosophy. The engine makes 320 horsepower and 310 pound-feet of torque in standard spec, can be turned up to 350 hp., and gets the Atom from zero to 60 miles per hour in 2.8 seconds. These specs, clearly, scream for a faster and more powerful Atom 4R. Thank heavens, it's here.

This time, the turbo K20 taken from the Civic Type R is jacked up to 400 hp. and 369 lb-ft. The numbers are made possible by redrawn intake geometry, vastly enhanced cooling thanks to a radiator in the new left sidepod and a larger air-to-air intercooler in the new right sidepod with 75% more surface area. Grunt runs through a new Quaife six-speed sequential gearbox with rev-blips on downshift. Paddles behind the wheel control a pneumatic gearchange system that works at full throttle and can swap five cogs in less than a second.