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Here, Bonhams is delighted to offer the extraordinary, the unique,the ground-breaking Aston Martin Atom – compact, lightweight,sophisticated, a design before its time, a prophetic forerunner ofall the high power-to-weight ratio, high-performance Coupe, orBerlinetta Grand Touring cars which became such a defining featureof the 1950s and ‘60s to follow. Here is an all-British concept car tobe recalled and mentioned in the same breath with the much morecelebrated and trend-setting Alfa Romeo 8C-2900 Berlinetta carsof the late 1930s, and the Savonuzzi Aerodinamica Coupes fromCisitalia in the late 1940s.This avant-garde, and highly-original aerodynamic Coupe conceptcar has been both renowned and revered for decades by AstonMartin owners and by the inner circle of knowledgeable andconfirmed classic car enthusiasts.But while Aston Martin’s unique Atom is less well-known to the publicat large, this 1939-1940 one-off prototype from the legendary Britishmarque is in fact a hugely significant and influential landmark withinmotoring history.As the specialist British marque’s frontier-technology test-bed,the 1939-40 Aston Martin Atom survives today, celebrating its75th anniversary in fantastically well-restored, highly-originalspecification as one of the World’s earliest fully running motorindustry concept cars.It featured in period:• A fully-patented, lightweight yet rigid integrated body and tubularspaceframe chassis structure (years ahead of the multi-tubularspaceframe Mercedes-Benz 300SLs)• Lightweight aluminium body paneling, which permitted speedystyling changes.• Patented parallel-linkage coil-sprung independent front suspension• The first UK use of the later almost universal Salisbury back axle• Cotal electromagnetic semi-automatic gearbox – forerunner of themodern ‘paddle-shift’ system.• Aerodynamic ‘fastback’ style Coupe coachwork• Aeronautical-style ‘hammock’ seatsCome 1945 the Atom would also provide the first use of AstonMartin’s newly patented 2-litre (DB1) engine. This had high liftexhaust valves later used on F1 Judd engines and, slightly modified,powered the 1948 Belgian Grand Prix winning Aston Martin.While the General Motors Buick ‘Y-Job’ of 1938 is widely acceptedas having been the very first pure ‘concept car’ (in the modernmeaning of that term) ever confected, the Aston Martin Atomemerged just a few fleeting months later.Motor Cars | 259