Ariel Atom titanium chassis in the works

New chassis would result in even-lighter Atom

If you know anything about bicycle frames you’ll appreciate the almost mystical qualities titanium tubing has to offer in terms of weight saving and that unique ability to damp out small, high frequency bumps.

So news that Ariel is working on an Atom with a titanium chassis – confirmed by Autocar – is hugely exciting. Exciting enough for us to ring Ariel’s Simon Saunders to find out more.

Standard car isn't exactly a heifer...

The headline news is a potential 40 per cent weight saving over the regular mild steel Atom chassis – 80kg of the Atom’s all-up weight. That would work out as an overall saving on the kerb weight of around eight per cent, though it’s still very early days as yet and Ariel hasn’t yet built a running prototype.

The bicycle connection isn’t entirely fictional either, Ariel working with renowned supplier of steel and titanium bike frame tubing Reynolds on the pipework for its prototype chassis. Established weight-saving techniques such as butting – thinning the tube walls along the tube but leaving it thicker at the end to support the weld – could be carried over too, saving as much as 1.5kg from the side struts on the Ariel chassis alone.

As Saunders says, it’s a slippery slope and once you start playing with the technology and the weight savings on offer it gets addictive.

Ariel chamber is the world's largest

It’s not all that straightforward though. Keen cyclists will be aware that although titanium is lighter than steel it’s also more flexible, a characteristic desirable in some applications in bike frames because it allows a degree of shock absorption on frames without any suspension. Great for dealing with ‘road buzz’ but perhaps not so desirable in a car chassis. Ariel has increased the diameter of some of the major tubes in the titanium chassis to answer this but there’s a host of tuning and experimentation to be done, on top of the 200 or so iterations of chassis design they’ve already been through to get this far.

Titanium is also very difficult to work with, requiring an entirely inert workspace purged of oxygen. The chamber in which Ariel has been welding its chassis has been specially built and is the biggest of its kind in the world – just purging all the oxygen out of it takes two days.

That quality of natural springiness and damping will present Ariel with interesting challenges and opportunities when it comes to tuning the feel of the car too. Saunders says they’ll be looking at spring rates and damping accordingly but it’s a fascinating project and one with huge potential for an even lighter, more exciting Atom. One that’ll probably cost quite a bit more too. But what the hell!

[Sources: Autocar]

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