Ariel assault: Atom 4 and the Ace motorbike driven

Motorcycles followed bicycles and were Ariel’s mainstay in the mid-20th century, and while Somerset’s modern iteration of Ariel doesn’t do retro, a lot of its staff love motorbikes, making the Ace a logical follow-up. 

As logical as a small company designing a motorbike can be, anyway. For one, the engineering space on a bike is incredibly tight. On a car, compromising a few centimetres of space is a conversation; on a bike, a couple of millimetres is a crisis. So the technical challenge is huge. 

Besides that, Ariel likes doing things big manufacturers can’t or aren’t interested in, and it’s easier to do that with cars than it is with bikes. Bikes are a niche market and all the big players already design things to be fun. 

In the end Ariel settled on making an exquisitely engineered, relatively expensive £20,000-plus bike with loads of options. Way more than on the Atom. 

Bikes aren’t usually this customisable from the factory. You can spec a BMW R Nine-T as a scrambler, a retro race bike or a naked street bike, but see them in profile and they’re pretty similar. 

The Ace takes the concept much further. Whichever Ace you spec, you get an aluminium frame that has been machined for 70 hours, and a 1200cc V4 engine (from Honda, naturally). But there are two different front ends – normal telescopic forks or girder forks – two geometries, three fuel tanks, four seats, options on handlebars, exhausts, foot pegs, wheels and more. The majority of buyers apparently go with something like you see here: a cruiser rather than sportster, with funky girder forks and relaxed geometry. 

Not that I’m totally relaxed, and a glance at the specification reveals why. The VFR1200 engine makes an incredible noise and 173bhp, and the whole caboodle weighs about 230kg, so the power-to-weight ratio (before rider) is 752bhp per tonne. An Atom 4, one of the most fiercely responsive and accelerative road cars I’ve driven, has ‘only’ 537bhp per tonne. 

So in the way that I know commercial gas burners get really hot, I know this bike can go very fast, although in both cases I’m taking it as read rather than sticking my hand over the flame. 

I can tell you it’s beautifully engineered and put together, and it is fun and responsive at low speeds. The seat is low, throttle response sharp. I read that the ground clearance isn’t amazing compared to a sports bike’s, but the only time I ‘get my knee down’ is when I’m greasing a chain. But the Ace isn’t a sports bike. 

And that’s fine. The Atom isn’t a conventional sports car, either. If all you wanted to do was go really fast, like everybody else does, you’d make it slipperier through the air. What the Atom and Ace share is on-display engineering integrity and a sense of occasion, and nobody else quite does it so spectacularly or appealingly. 

Not a sports bike, then. Not sure it’s a cruiser, either. But it’s definitely, unashamedly an Ariel, and all the better for it.

Ariel’s two-wheeled heritage

Ariel’s first bicycle was notable for having patented, tension-spoked wheels, and the company had been in business for more than a quarter of a century before it made its first motorised vehicles. They were powered tricycles and quadricycles with only a few horsepower, while its first motorcycle arrived in 1902. Cars were made until 1925, including, in 1908, a ‘grand prix racer’, while in the 1930s the bikes – notably the single-cylinder Red Hunter and 1000cc Square Four – were so successful that Ariel even bought Triumph. 

In the 1950s Ariel and Triumph became part of BSA, then not long after Japanese bikes arrived and that was pretty much it for Britain’s motorcycle industry.