
Originally Posted by
Bruce Fielding
I don't understand why the US owners are so blindly supportive of a company that gave them so much grief. Or why they won't take credit for making it better. The Brammo Atoms that have had all the fixes are great cars. I'm not disputing that. But I do know of at least half a dozen owners who were vociferous in their criticism.
I don't know that you can call it "blindly supportive". I think that I'm one of critical owners you mention - Brammo committed a massive fuckup in the way the rod end problem occurred as well as the way they tried to ignore it until Simon got very upset with them. That's another one of Bruce's "ask me in person" things, I bet.
But I remember back to when my car was being built, and the whole experience of picking it up. Those were the heady days when the first US-numbered cars (001 and up) were coming off the line and everything seemed possible. For those who weren't around then, or who have forgotten, I strongly suggest viewing the Spaz/Woolery Brammo tour (click here for the Google Video version). If you don't have time for the whole thing, skip to around 20:20 which shows (almost) everybody, and ends with Tom Smurzynski giving Spaz a checkout run in his new Atom. Look how happy Spaz looks! In fact, if you look at the rest of the video, everybody is smiling.
After I got back home from picking up my Atom and putting 7700 miles on it, I flew out to Brammo (at my expense) a couple times to talk to them about ways that the car or production could be improved. And on one of those trips, I took everybody I could find out to dinner and drinks at their favorite watering hole.
By the time AtomFest 2007 came around, I could look at that video and go "he's gone... Him too..." for quite a while. By that time, I'd already had the suspension failure and been reimbursed for most of it (I'm still out for $2250 for transport that I'll never see).
And of course, right after AtomFest we all heard that Tom had left, and that was pretty much the end, at least for me. I placed some parts orders, but it was like pulling teeth to get anything done. Eventually I wound up purchasing the rest of the parts from TMI.
If I saw Craig Bramscher today, I'd probably smile and say "We had some great times, and you sure crashed and burned, huh?". Would I ever buy anything from him again? Very unlikely. But I'm not bitter - perhaps rueful - and can appreciate the work they did and what they accomplished.
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