The BMW M5 Competition is basically a supercar in sedan clothes. It brings so much performance to the table, it’s pretty darn hard to make the case for a two-seater going up against it, be it a McLaren 570S or even a Porsche 991 Turbo. It almost has too much power for its own good and, if it didn’t come with all-wheel drive, it would’ve been a real handful in any given situation. Therefore, people have been keen on testing the new M car against …. well basically everything.
The main competitor is the Mercedes-AMG E63 S and the two have been head to head a number of times since the BMW arrived on the scene. Now, the Bavarian land missile is going up against a couple of very odd rivals on the drag strip. Rival is a very loosely used word in this context. The Miata or the S2000 can hardly be considered even close to the same league in which the BMW M5 Competition is playing right now.
The first race is against the Miata, with obvious results. Then comes the turn of the Honda S2000 and, once again, nobody’s surprised by the result. Then comes a true contender, in the shape of the Ariel Atom. There’s a chance you don’t know a lot about it and that’s because it can hardly be called a… car? It’s essentially an engine hooked up to a roll cage, alongside four wheels and a gearbox. It’s basically the most extreme thing you can drive on the road these days, without breaking the law.
Ariel launched a couple of versions of the Atom so far, and the one in the video below seems to be a 3S. That means it uses a 2-liter turbocharged Honda engine good for 365 HP and 407 Nm of torque. Sure, compared to the 625 HP of the M5 Competition, it seems too little but then again, this is a car that weighs 550 kilos, nearly a quarter of what the BMW M5 brings to the table. According to Ariel, the Atom 3S should do 100 km/h (62 mph) from standstill in 2.9 seconds so, yeah, this is a worthy rival. Not the same could be said about the Dodge Caravan at the end though…
