SIMON SAUNDERS

The designer and creator of the Ariel Atom talks us through his lifelong passion for cars and bikes, his diverse design career and his ownership history

- JOHN BARKER

MY FIRST MEMORABLE CAR EXPERIENCE, at three years old, was falling out of a 1920s 3 Litre Bentley belonging to my godfather, which sounds quite posh. The door opened and I ended up on the road. But you tend to bounce at that age, so I was put back in and we carried on. Possibly this planted the seed to my later aversion to doors on the Atom...'

Following that initial brush with luxury (and tarmac), Simon Saunders' passion for cars was forged amidst more everyday machines. 'I only had a mum, and our first car, when I was about six, was a prewar, battered Morris 8 Tourer, so the poshness does evaporate there,' he explains. 'My childhood mission was trying to convince her to buy interesting cars, possibly the daftest being a 1928 Buick hearse. She managed to resist.

'As a boy, being good at art and having a passion for cars, I put the two together at a fairly early age and decided I should draw cars for a living. I never changed from this goal, although the careers adviser disagreed, saying there was no such job, recommending the army instead. But spare time, holidays, were spent drawing cars. A formative book from - amazingly - the local library, and doubtless an influence on the Atom later, was Racing and Sports Car Chassis Design by Mike Costin. Aside from the chassis drawings, a photograph showed an unbodied car with all the mechanics on view. It looked amazing. But turning the page there was the bodied car and it was so disappointing.