Ron,
I didn't know you were there! You should have given me a call!
Target price for the car is $29,990 for a complete "roller" less engine, radiator (should come with your engine), transaxle, 1/2 shafts (should come with your transaxle) wheels, tires and exhaust. This is only a target price and it is not yet set in stone. We are still chasing down numbers. Why didn't we figure it out earlier??? Well, we made the car in about 10 days. We waited for some time to get all of the parts from Ford. When they finally came through it didn't leave us much time. As you all know, they have had bigger problems lately and they did help all they could.
The engineering CAD for the chassis and suspension was done over the past year, but you can only go so far when you don't have all of the engine/transmission pieces. 10 days before SEMA the car was nothing but a bare chassis. 3 weeks before SEMA there wasn't even a chassis except in CAD. We just had too many normal orders to keep up with to get started any sooner. Ford wanted to see pictures of the car 3 days before the show and I wouldn't send them any--I figured they'd never believe it was going to make it. I actually called in 4 of our former employees who are still in the area to come and help and they did. They were a tremendous help.
Anyway,
We had FAR more interest in the car than we thought we would. I was very surprised there were always people around the car. 2 Guys Garage came and filmed us and afterwards the camera man turned to me and said, "Every year for the past 4 years we have filmed you guys. You are the only ones we film EVERY year. You must be doing something right. This car is unbelievable!" Sam Mamolo told me it was the "wildest car in the show!"
Blackie Gegian came by and invited us again to the Fresno Autorama. He said he saw the car clear across the hall and knew he had to have it so he motored over and gave us an invite. When he saw us there he just laughed. He said, "I should have known I'd find you here."
The last day of the show, the head of Ford Show Vehicles called me up and thanked me for making the car and said, "Everything you guys do turns to gold! Well, or copper or aluminum or stainless!" It was a very kind comment.
Because of all the interest, we are very seriously considering a CNC tube bender and some other very sophisticated equipment to make them as quickly and as inexpensively as possible. (This is good news for our other cars as well as we will now be able to offer stainless steel side pipes as an upgrade).
The car will be set up for both generations of buyers. 4 cylinder engines for the younger crowd and 6 cylinders for those of us who still think "Big Blocks" rule.
As for Jamo and Glamis...well, the car WAS designed for dual or even triple use. We have wings in the works for track days (coming soon), lights for street use, and paddle tires for jumping the dunes. Remember, we are all Utah boys here and "Sand Mountain" is calling our name. All we need to do is adjust a few suspension parts, add a little more ground clearance and time to jump into the sand blaster.
The inspiration for the car was actually not the Atom, it was the Radical and the Super 7. A couple of years ago I saw a Radical at Willow. Dave Dralle (somewhat depressively) told us the Radical could spank a Cobra by 10 seconds at Willow. (I may be remembering the seconds wrong--it may have only been 5 but who cares, they are fast). I got to discussing the car with Thomas and he told me all about Colin Chapman, the Super 7, and his "add lightness" philosophy in life.
Thomas told me he had always wanted to do a modern Super 7. Well the Radical charged me up and I wanted to go...but, the Copper 40 Ford slowed me down. So, we started engineering on the car in January of last year. Everything is done with CAD. At that time I hadn't even seen an Atom.
The car was engineered in a very strange order. Thomas and I decided the most important thing to do was to get the suspension right and then we would figure out how to cover it and make it look cool. Thomas worked for months on the suspension--camber gain, bump steer, scrub angles, Ackerman, wheel rates, spring rates, you name it. He has more books and subscriptions to race car magazines than a library. He was constantly printing out graphs, making plots and arguing with our engineer in manufacturing. I told them, make it right and we will figure out how to actually make it later.
The tubular chassis is Thomas' idea. It seems a tubular space frame is almost impossible to beat in terms of lightness, stiffness, and ease of manufacture. The suspension is completely Thomas' baby. You should have seen Thomas and our engineer fighting over 0.005 of an inch in the suspension--Thomas always won, but it made some parts quite difficult to make. They worked and worked to get it right on paper (well, actually, the computer screen).
In the midst of the battle between engineering and manufacturing (notice there were and are no bean counters in the fight) Thomas emailed me the link to the Top Gear video of the Atom. There were things we really liked about the car and there were things we really didn't like about the car. Everything was finally coming together.
The shape of the car is largely dictated by the constraints of manufacturing and the geometry of the suspension. The final body shape was mostly determined by manufacturing--with a few of my suggestions thrown in to sharpen things up. JMHO
We hope to have it running in 4-6 weeks. We have already sold the first cars.
It's going to be cool. I can't wait to drive it.
David
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