It's been a lot of work this past half-year to make this move happen, but the dust has settled, and we entered 2018 fully up to speed with fabrication and manufacturing in our new addition; a 3-building complex. One is a dedicated machine shop housing our CNC mills, lathes and other equipment while the other two buildings are focused on mandrel bending, small component fabrication, housing construction and chassis/subframe production. Chassis assembly and crating occupies our original shop, while the adjacent building now has expanded room for component warehousing. Sales, administration, engineering and shipping offices have remained in the same location. AME now occupies nearly 50,000 square feet under roof.
Needless to say, this reorganization has allowed us to give the fabrication process a more streamlined flow and will be able to let us construct chassis and components in a more efficient manner. The extra room will also allow for more dedicated jig tables to be built for future GT Sport chassis and hiring more technicians. Now we can focus on increasing production rates and reducing our lead times.
We'll be expanding our GT Sport chassis product line in 2018. The first application in development is the Chevrolet C2 (1963-1967) Corvette. Since the introduction of the AME Multilink IRS, we've sold quite a few builder's chassis for the original Stingray and it will surely be a home run as a bolt-on frame. One custom customer build was an incredible hit this past year at the SEMA show. Eddies Rod and Custom crafted a 1963 Corvette like no other. Utilizing an AME chassis it had an amazing level of detail and featured a potent Small Block Chevy engine with individual throttle bodies.
