If you’ve been wondering about those cars around Ashland that look like dune buggies on steroids, they’re the first of a line of relatively inexpensive high-performance, two-seat, street- legal cars that promise fun for the enthusiast — and dozens of jobs for Jackson County.

Called the Ariel Atom, the gutsy-looking, bodyless car has gone into production at Brammo Motorsports, which has set up temporary shop in Ashland’s ScienceWorks Museum — and counts talk show host Jay Leno among its first customers.

"Leno helped get us hooked up with General Motors, using their Ecotec supercharged engine, the one used in the Saturn and Chevy Cobalt. That’s Leno’s car on the rotisserie," said Brammo CEO Craig Bramscher, pointing to a sleek tubular chassis mounted on a rotating bench, so it can be affixed with all the desired wires, levers and accessories.

The vehicle, selling for $35,000 to $70,000 depending on horsepower and extras, is a decided guy car, sporting the "race-bred design" of the Ferraris and Lamborghinis of the 1960s, said Bramscher, who made a fortune in the dot-com boom and, although shopping for investors, is funding most of the privately held company himself.

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Bramscher by the end of the year hopes to build several 25,000-square-foot buildings for manufacturing his cars on eight acres he just bought on Valley View Road across the freeway, just outside Ashland, he said. Facing development obstacles on light industrial land he owns in town, he’s given up building his factory in Ashland.

The company has 12 employees now, wants to add 20 this year (they’re advertising for welders, fabricators and laminators) and hopes to employ 100 more over the next few years, he said.

The first half-dozen vehicles are built, 50 are ordered — Brammo has a point-and-click ordering site online — and inquiries are pushing 10,000, he noted, with about 10 potential customers flying in for test drives each month. Buyers put $20,000 down before their cars are custom-built.

If things go well — "I’m building a company, not a car" — Bramscher said he hopes the firm five years from now will make a thousand cars and rake in $80 million annually.

Holding to that trajectory, he is moving to the next step, a "supercar," dubbed the Rogue GT (named after the Rogue Valley), listing at under $500,000 and designed to compete with the "million dollar supercars" — the Ferrari and Lamborghini.

Fashioned as a hyper-sporty "full, traditional car" with carbon-fiber body "for American-sized guys," it should be available by the end of the year, he said.

Down the road a few years are the V8 Ronin GT, under $200,000, and an environmentally-friendly electric vehicle, he said, as well as an alternative fuel race car that runs on liquid propane or hydrogen.

"We’re 50 percent done on (designing) the electric car," he said. "It will be a blast to drive. It will bring notoriety to the electric field and it fits into our high performance vehicle vision."

Brammo builds most parts — except engine, drive train and electronics — in-house, using 3-D computer-assisted design (CAD) to fashion "every nut, bolt and washer" and direct CNC (computer numeric control) machines that actually make the parts.

The Ariel Atom’s design is licensed from the British Ariel Motor Car Co. but future models are designed in-house by Brian Wismann, a 25-year-old veteran of Daytona race car body designing, hired from North Carolina, and engineer Michael Sorensen, a local resident who fashions the mechanics of the vehicles.

The Atom, like the rest of Brammo’s planned vehicles, is "reliable, durable, hand-built, super-engineered" and without competition in its price range, said Bramscher.

"Our competition, really, is the boat and chopper (motorcycle) in the $50,000 range. The Atom is an enthusiast’s car for cycle drivers who want the thrill of a cycle and the safety of a car. I had a couple close calls (on motorcycles), and I have kids now, so I know. When I was in the UK and first drove it (the Ariel Atom), I became obsessed with it. It’s like nothing I ever drove."

The Atom has won the title of fastest-accelerating production car in the world in several tests, going from zero to 60 mph in a head-snapping 2.8 seconds, said Bramscher.

The Brammo formula for performance calls for a light, strong, aerodynamic body driven by a powerful mid-engine, that is, mounted behind the driver, just in front of the rear drive wheels. Horsepower on the GM engine ranges from 160 to 300. Bramscher started with a Honda engine but switched to GM as part of a philosophy to buy American.

"The Atom has a power train meant for a 3,000-pound car, but driving only a 1,300-pound car," said Sorensen. "The light weight is the reason it performs. What you’ve got is a tiger by the tail, a sports vehicle that’s so economical — it gets 33 miles a gallon — that it sells itself and so reliable you won’t have to work on it for two or three years."

Although he is being courted by state economic development people in California, where he came from four years ago, Bramscher says he chose Ashland as the spot for his dreams because "it’s a great place to raise the kids, has the best balance of small town and culture and has the best lifestyle, which means there are a lot of overqualified people here. Plus, I don’t want to commute."

Although this valley is remote from metro population centers and big airports, Bramscher said it works as a sports-car mecca, following the model of Modena, Italy, the Medford-sized town that’s home to all the great Italian sports-car firms.

Bramscher had wanted to build his plant on eight acres he owns inside Ashland, in the Washington Street light industrial area, but city officials told him the process would take a year or two, he said.

"I can’t wait that long, so I guess I’ll sell or develop that land," he said. "Central Point bent over backwards, telling me bulldozers would be moving in three weeks if I came, but I didn’t want to commute.

"Ashland has such a slow-growth, no-growth policy. I realized there was no way I was going to bring 50 jobs here, like I’d like to. I heard there is interest in keeping jobs here, but I’ve not seen it. So I opted for building in the county, just outside Ashland."

John Darling is a freelance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.