The car has a reasonably interesting history, as it was originally bought by Williams F1's Advanced Engineering department for a project commissioned by Nissan.
The project involved buying two Atoms, using one as a nigh-on factory spec reference car and one as a development mule / PoC for the Nissan Bladeglider narrow front track configuration. The car I’ve ended up with was the reference (un-modified) car. I say unmodified, however both cars has a fairly substantial roll cage welded to the original chassis. Presumably as the narrow-track car may have needed it, and the reference car needed one to make the comparison fair.
Here’s a link to a magazine article about it: http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a9769/exclusive-sort-of-driving-the-nissan-bladeglider-concept-16178124/
After the project completed, the car became available for purchase, and with a family member being a W-F1 employee, I was able to take advantage…
The car was built by TMI Autotech in 2013, and is spec’d as a LHD chassis, with a K24Z motor, LSD and Wilwood Dynalite ’Track' spec brakes. With only 780 miles on the clock, it’s all pretty much box fresh too…
As the car was only ever used on closed circuits, it was never registered for road use. A few calls with Henry at Ariel and the guys at TMI and it was clear that getting the car IVA’d wouldn’t be a problem. All that was missing was a pair of headlights and the handbrake setup. Both of which I have now fitted to the car.
It should be getting IVA’d by Ariel mid-June and fully road-registered by mid-July.
Sadly, due to pending building works at home, I’m not sure how long I will be able to the wife will let me hold on to the car, but if I can get a few months of summer driving I’ll be happy enough.
