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The Atom was finished and UK road-registered only six weeks afterthe Dunkirk evacuation in 1940. Aston Martin’s contemporary owner,enthusiast businessman Gordon Sutherland, had ordered the car tobe designed and built by a dedicated engineering team led by ClaudeHill. At that fraught time when park railings, pots and pans werebeing melted-down to aid the War effort, the Atom was amongstfewer than 750 private cars to be UK registered in the entire year.Gordon Sutherland himself explained that, “The whole point of theAtom was to make the smallest, lightest, quietest enclosed saloonpossible”. It was intended to combine the performance, roadholdingand handling of the finest contemporary sports car with quietnessand the comfort of an aerodynamically efficient, saloon body, easilymodified and economically produced. Within this latter discipline theAtom’s concept was probably even further forward-looking than,even ten years ago, we would have appreciated....In that pre-nuclear age Gordon Sutherland and his colleaguessimply knew of the ‘atom’ as being the smallest, yet potentially mostpowerful, item conceivable – the essence of everything – and thatis why the name was chosen as the perfect title for this technicallyadvanced and futuristic Grand Touring car and registered with theSMMT (Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders).The Aston Martin design unit’s ambitions had no British exemplar,but Gordon Sutherland would admit they considered thecontemporary BMW 328 quite closely during their design periodin 1939. Both the company owner and engineer Claude Hillappreciated that the entire era of ‘vintage’ motoring was over.Future customers would expect more comfort in terms of ride andweather protection. To achieve such objectives with traditionalmanufacture meant hand-built heavy coachwork demanding hugeand extravagantly fuel-thirsty engines to suit.Major motor manufacturers were beginning to make unitary-bodycars with independent suspensions – widely derided by true carenthusiasts as floppy, wallowy rust-buckets – but of obvious appealto the mushrooming motoring market at large.Although high-achievers within the motor sporting world, AstonMartin’s vintage-era chassis were undoubtedly heavy and ClaudeHill in particular considered them insufficiently rigid. For the Atom hecreated a lightweight, torsionally strong box-frame chassis welded-upfrom rectangular steel tubing and clothed in aerodynamically-sleekaluminium body paneling – a constructional method ideal for AstonMartin’s low-volume high-quality practices.260 | Goodwood festival of speed