The Ariel Atom is an amazing car and a sure-fire way to lose your license in a hurry, but with a price tag north of 50 grand, it can be tough putting one in your driveway. Unless you build it yourself.

That's just what one enterprising but so far anonymous gearhead in Utah did, cobbling together an impressive copy of the Atom from junk he had lying around. The body was fashioned from an old kayak and a doghouse. The stainless bits were recycled from old appliances, and the throttle assembly was pulled from a Dumpster. It's all attached to a frame that's fashioned from what looks to us like old steel pipe, and the engine was pulled from a junked Acura RSX.

The builder, a college student known by his Flickr moniker Proximacentauri, spent 800 hours over the course of 15 months building the car, which offers impressive performance.

Proximacentauri says his Ariel Atom clone, which he calls Z59, cranks out about 160 horsepower and does 0 to 60 in 4.5 seconds - just under a second behind the real Atom. The car's street-legal and registered, and Proxicentauri claims it gets 35 mpg.

You can follow the full build-up on his Flickr page, which is where we got the photos after first reading about the Z59 over at MAKE.