The new Nomad 2 will likely be brilliant - but the original was pretty great as well
Not many other off-roaders are as hilarious to driveGratifyingly low on electrical stuff to go wrongBelieve it or not, Simon Saunders’ Somerset-based company Ariel has been around since 1991, but the big year was 1999 when the Ariel Motor Company was formed and their first vehicle, the Atom, was announced. It was like nothing else on the road.
The build process allowed Ariel to declare the basic Nomad finished at what some might consider to be a fairly rudimentary level. It was good, though, because that policy allowed buyers to create their own custom vehicle by choosing from an extended menu of options the like of which you rarely saw on any other car.
The upsides of the Sadev box were unfeasibly relentless acceleration, the 0-60 coming up in a breathless 2.9 seconds, and the opportunity it gave you to hone your left-foot braking skills, leaning the R over at crazy angles and wondering how much fun it was actually possible to have in a car while your trousers were still in place. All that was assuming you had the £77,000 asking price and your name was on the order list, which was just five cars long.
The slick 6-speed manual gearbox was non-negotiable but £1,100 bought you a seven per cent shorter final drive which boosted your acceleration without affecting the top speed. £1,200 paid for a heavy-duty clutch including a K20 flywheel, while £1,000 got you an oil cooler system in the engine bay. A cat bypass pipe was £110.
You might have noticed we said ‘road’ a minute ago. The Nomad looked like a refugee from the Paris-Dakar or a stunt vehicle from Dune but it was just as accomplished on the tarmac, as many who have been overtaken by one on a track day will testify.
Another regularly requested change that has been implemented for the new Nomad 2 was the provision of a visor below the optional array of four old-school round roof lights to cut out the glare which could be a problem on the 1 at night. The 2’s new visor incorporates a neat set of rectangular LED spotlights and doubles up as a provider of two air streams, one for the intercooler and one for the engine.
There was only one dedicated storage space. It was basically a plastic box at the front that was big enough for a mobile phone and its charger and maybe half a sandwich. You were better off using the box to carry bungee straps and string for lashing stuff down to other parts of the car. Most of the issues affecting modern cars are electrical, so the absence of most of that sort of gubbins in the Nomad’s ‘interior’ should stand it in good stead.
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