Atalanta Motors - back after more than 70 years
Pre-war Brit sports car set to make a 21st-century comeback
Now, before you start saying 'Ata-who?' (because that's just what we did when we heard about this), permit us to explain. Atalanta Motors was a pre-WWII British sports car company based in Staines, Middlesex that produced technically intriguing sports cars in the immediate pre-war years. Unfortunately a certain Mr A Hitler rather put the stoppers on the operation, and production halted in 1939 after just two years and 21 cars. So you're definitely forgiven if you've never heard of Atalanta...
But the little sports car maker shone brightly for a couple of years. It was the only pre-War British car manufacturer to use: fully independent coil spring suspension, adjustable damping front and rear, fully hydraulic brakes, electrically operated magnetic epicyclic gearbox (an early semi-automatic, no less), a multi valve twin-spark cylinder head... and even extensive use of lightweight materials such as elektron, duralumin and hiduminium (what they? - Ed) for many of its castings.
Atalanta wasn't short of variety either - it could be had with a 1.5- or 2.0-litre four-cylinder, (supercharged or naturally aspirated) or even a 4.3-litre V12 Lincoln Zephyr engine producing 112bhp. Body-wise, you could have an open two-seater, a two-seat sports tourer, a two-door fixed head coupe and saloon and even a two-door drop-head coupe. Oh, and Atalanta competed in both rallying and racing - even entering Le Mans.
"Atalanta is one of the greatest untold British Motoring heritage stories. The cars and the team that delivered the original concept were so ahead of their time. What might have been had the war not interrupted development?" says Atalanta CEO Martyn Corfield."
As custodian of the Atalanta marque it is my objective to sensitively bring the original Atalanta design up to date, delivering modern motoring needs of safety, reliability and performance but still remaining true in spirit to the Atalanta sports car ideals and deliver the quality of product that this marque deserves."
Whether Corfield's grand plans work out or not, of course, is another matter entirely, but it does at least seem to be a generally more promising affair than the, er, bling-tastic Eterniti Motors. So we wish him the very best of British...
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