Interesting videos showing Ariel manufacture in the US

[Fastlane]

For those of you who are interested in the construction process for Atoms, there are quite a few videos showing TMI Autotech's very impressive facility in the US where the Atom and Nomad are made under licence. What's particularly interesting is how many parts they make on site including the chassis, as opposed to the UK where chassis manufacture is outsourced to Arch in Huntingdon. Does anybody know if Ariel manufacturer any parts in house in the UK (I couldn't see any sign of this at Crewkerne) or is it all outsourced?

Here are some of the videos, some of which are made by TMI:

[HenryJS]

Its all outsourced...

Makes the car cheaper, and better!

[Fastlane]

Thanks Henry - I thought that must be the case. I wonder why TMI choose do theirs in house?

[cvjoint]

It's not unusual even for large manufacturers. Corvette outsourced the C6 Z06/ZR1 chassis to Dana, but they built the C7 in house. The reason there was that aluminum frames in the C6 era were new and relatively few. So with the Atom, with the very low volumes I'm not surprised a lot of parts are outsourced.

Nearly everything is outsourced today, even on cars that are believed to be "mostly [fill in blank]":

http://gmauthority.com/blog/wp-content/ ... pliers.jpg