Always fancied driving a race car but never had the time, money or opportunity? Well, a small company in Britain is producing what amounts to a road legal race car and it is going to be made in the States by Brammo Motorsports.

It is called the Ariel Atom and is just a space frame, wheels and an engine – needless to say, it goes like a racer. In fact, Jeremy Clarkson says it’s more fun than a motor bike and he just might be right.

With the Honda Civic R engine, supercharged, it has over 500 bhp per ton and achieves 0-60 mph in 2.9 seconds. Top speed is a mere 140 mph or so but, as it has no windscreen (or body for that matter), it would be tearing off your face at that speed anyway.

As with all great cars, it is the handling that makes the real difference and the Atom just begs to be thrown around – as it should with so little weight and loads of power.

The American version will have a supercharged GM Ecotec engine but promises to be just as quick and as much fun. Save your pennies.

Here’s a strange one – the Tatra 603. Made in Czechoslovakia, the 603 was actually well before its time when first designed in the fifties. The company has been going strong for almost as long as Benz, although they gave up making cars in the nineties, preferring to concentrate on their successful truck range.

But Tatra began its tradition of rear-engined vehicles in the thirties, even Dr Ferdinand Porsche “borrowing” heavily from Tatra designs in the design of his Volkswagen. The 603 was one of these rear-engined curiosities.

But the uniqueness of the 603 does not end with its unusual positioning of the power plant. The engine was an air-cooled 2.5 liter V8! Okay, it only produced 95 bhp but imagine all that weight swinging around behind the back axle. The handling was spectacular at speed as a result – but it did not matter too much since only the top party officials and factory managers could afford to have one. They were interested in luxury rather than performance and the 603 delivered in that area.

Those Czechs know how to put together a good car, in spite of the undeserved reputation of the old Skodas, and Tatra was no exception. The company holds a number of impressive records, as well as Dr Porsche’s respect – it is the third oldest car manufacturer in the world and was the first to introduce a body influenced by aerodynamics.

Further to my previous post on the Auto Union D-Type, I see that Christie’s are now saying that they expect the D-Type to fetch in the region of $12,000,000. There is an inaccuracy in CNNMoney’s article on the car that I ought to correct, however.

It is not quite true to say that Auto Union are now known as Audi. Auto Union were exactly what their name states, an amalgamation of several German manufacturers, one of which was known as Audi. In the sixties, Auto Union was absorbed into Volkswagen but was allowed to disappear, apparently forever.

In the seventies, when VW decided that they needed a new marque to make luxury cars and to dissociate it from the company’s “beetle” image, someone obviously remembered that they held the rights to the Audi name and it was duly resurrected. It can hardly be said that Audis are the descendant of the D-Type, therefore – only the Audi name survived.

But I don’t suppose VAG will mind at all if their cars are associated in some way with the D-Type – it was a glorious beast, after all. Just take a look at this…

Christie’s are going to be auctioning one of the only two 1939 Auto Union D-Types in the world. It is expected to fetch the highest ever price for a car of any sort.

The D-Type was Auto Union’s response to Hitler’s demand that German cars be unbeatable in racing. I’m sure we all have seen photographs of the rear-engined monster, a car so ferociously difficult to drive that only the truly talented (and brave), like Nuvolari and Caracciola, could drive it.

But what a gorgeous monster it is! As I mentioned in a previous post, its looks were to influence the design of the Audi TT Coupe, a distant inheritor of the Auto Union legacy. Like the Mercedes offering of the time, the D-Type met the challenge of racing with oodles of power but at least the Auto Union engineers made the fight against Alfa Romeo a little fairer by choosing a configuration for the time that made the car almost a death trap!

So, if you have a few million to spare, remember to put your bid in early.