The Audacity Club

The first cars were rubbish. They were noisy, unreliable, oily contraptions designed by madmen in sheds, and their main function was to catch fire or strand you in a ditch miles from civilisation. Most car companies, quite sensibly, spent their time trying to make them slightly less rubbish. But there was a company that seemed to view the basic act of motoring as far too easy - Ariel. They weren't interested in just getting from A to B; they were interested in proving a point, usually by attempting something so spectacularly difficult and pointless that no sane person would even consider it.

The Mountain

This brings us to 1904, and an idea so profoundly weird it could only have been cooked up by a British engineer. Someone at Ariel looked at Snowdon - a massive, angry-looking Welsh mountain - and said, "Gents, I've had an idea. Let's drive up that." There was no road, of course. The plan was first to use the mountain railway track, and then a path made of sharp rocks with gradients that would give a modern Land Rover a panic attack. The first attempt ended in failure and, one assumes, a great deal of swearing.

But Ariel was not a company to be deterred by difficulties. They came back later that year with their 10-horsepower car and, through what can only be described as sheer, bloody-minded determination, wrestled the thing all the way to the summit. It was the first car in history to do it. It proved absolutely nothing of any practical value, but as a statement of glorious, engineering arrogance, it was magnificent.

The Wall of Death

Having conquered nature, Ariel immediately went looking for a man-made challenge to defeat. They found one in 1907 at Brooklands, the world’s first purpose-built motor racing circuit. Brooklands wasn't a racetrack in the modern sense, but a giant, banked concrete wall of death. The banking was so steep that drivers had to physically look up through the corner, all while wrestling a car with brakes that didn't brake and tyres the width of a bicycle's. It was terrifying. And naturally, Ariel was there on the starting line for the very first race on July 6, 1907.

They didn't win that first event, but they came second, which for a car that had recently been holidaying on a mountaintop, was a pretty spectacular result. It wasn't long before they were winning, with the company's owner, Charles Sangster, taking the chequered flag himself at a later meeting. Ariel had proven its point again: its cars weren't just tough, they were properly fast.

The Miserable Holiday

By 1924, Ariel's cars had become more sophisticated, but the company's appetite for punishment had not diminished. They entered an Ariel Ten saloon in the RAC Trial, which sounds rather pleasant until you read the details. It was a 1,788-mile trip from the bottom of Cornwall to the absolute end of Scotland, and back again. Imagine that journey today. Now, imagine doing it in a tiny, pre-war saloon with the weather protection of a sieve and the comfort of a church pew. To make matters worse, the rules forbade coasting downhill, a regulation seemingly designed purely to maximise misery.

The man at the wheel was a young Ariel dealer named Donald Healey, a man who would later become a legend but who clearly started his career with a higher tolerance for suffering than most. For nearly 1,800 miles, the little Ariel just kept going. It didn't break, it didn't boil, and it didn't give up. It averaged an almost unbelievable 53.79 miles per gallon and used only five pints of water. It was a stunning demonstration of reliability. It was also, without question, the most miserable holiday anyone had ever been on.

For two decades, Ariel proved its cars could climb higher, race faster, and endure more punishment than almost any other vehicle on the road. It was a company fuelled by a restless, pioneering spirit, forever seeking the next impossible challenge, just to show the world it could be done.