Brammo nostalgia.

[bolus]

Anyone remember these from 2006?

[bolus]

[Rocket Man]

What is the story of brammo? Why do they not produce the atom now

[bolus]

That's a long story. I was hoping someone would write a book on that since it would be filled with secrets and intrigue and twists Basic story is I think they tried to grow too fast and werent selling enough Atom's and the owner decided to make electric motorcycles at the same time and didnt want to make Atom's anymore and sold the business to TMI who have taken over superbly.

[Rocket Man]

I do think it is about time someone put finger to keypad and wrote a book on both the uk and usa atoms, history, development, models with lots of nice pictures. There would not be an atom enthusiast anywere with out a copy
Come on someone go for it !!!!!!!!!!!!

[MadMaxAtom]

Great video Bolus.Glad you posted it. It is obvious that Craig expected to build a lot of Atoms..and I think this was his downfall. He geared up to make hundreds,and was only getting orders for dozens. The investment to build the cars was certainly huge,and with the orders only trickling in..a business decision was made to drop production of the Atom. Unfortunately,Craig didn't bother to inform too many people of this decision,especially potential customers. Even as the truth became known,he said nothing. Not a good way to conduct business,in my opinion! The brammo Atoms were obviously being built by caring,devoted individuals..it's too bad their leader was mainly interested in profits. The highest praise and admiration to TMI for stepping right in to take over Atom production,with so much enthusiasm! They have truly shown they care about the product for more than just a paycheck! Bravo!

[Terry Kennedy]

Anyone remember these from 2006?

That's a great video.

Did you ever notice that at the end when everybody is listed, you can tell who works in the composites division just by looking at them?

Great video Bolus.Glad you posted it. It is obvious that Craig expected to build a lot of Atoms..and I think this was his downfall. He geared up to make hundreds,and was only getting orders for dozens.

Craig made the classic mistake of many startups, that there were loads and loads of people just waiting to order the product and that there would never be any need to do marketing. This was reinforced by the pent-up demand before any cars were delivered, fueled by the popularity of the Top Gear video. I tried to warn him about this, before he'd delivered any cars, but he just nodded politely and ignored me.

The investment to build the cars was certainly huge,and with the orders only trickling in..a business decision was made to drop production of the Atom.

It's amazing that with the production infrastructure they'd built up, that they could have been caught by surprise on the other end when there weren't enough orders coming in to support the business, or indeed to even pay for the parts to complete the cars in progress.

They'd also discovered they were losing money on each car, raised the prices repeatedly without attempting to control production costs, and alienated a lot of customers with a bunch of stuff they'd done.

Craig wanted to renegotiate the terms of his license from Simon, and instead found out about the China deal. He couldn't get anyone to finance his Atom-building operation (it wasn't for lack of asking anyone he thought might have money). He was able to get funding for something he controlled completely (which became the Inertia), so he dropped the Atom like a hot potato and switched to that.

[MadMaxAtom]

If only Craig had been more honest and forthcoming toward the end...I wouldn't still harbor a desire to smack him right between the eyes. Well..at least he gave the Atom it's official start in the USA.

[Positron]

Yeah.. but we felt like we were part of something. Having a car "built" for you and having the coveted pictures of your car's progress arrive was pretty cool. Not too many people can wear that badge.

[Terry Kennedy]

Yeah.. but we felt like we were part of something. Having a car "built" for you and having the coveted pictures of your car's progress arrive was pretty cool. Not too many people can wear that badge.

Over on the AAOC, I posted about this over 3 years ago. Here's the link, but I'll paste the text here for those who don't want to click through.

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.