Down with car costs
The rising cost of body repairs to motor cars is about to force up insurance premiums again.
The most popular method of auto construction today consists of stressed steel pressings welded together so that there is no need for a separate chassis. Although this produces a stronger car for less weight, which can be mass-produced, it is not nearly so easy to repair an integral body-chassis unit when quite minor dents can distort the wheel alignment.
Advertisement
In the old days a car could sustain a considerable amount of damage to the body without twisting the chassis, and even if this was bent, specialists could quickly straighten it again by eye, or by taking a few simple measurements with a piece of string.
Nowadays, a simple blow in one place may produce distortion somewhere else which is often very difficult to find. So the stage has been reached where, if a motor car bounces on its roof, it is more economical to transfer its engine, gear box transmission, suspension and mechanical parts, plus the upholstery, instruments, heater and accessories, into a new mass-produced body shell.
The major car manufacturers are spending so much money on new automatic equipment for their steel-pressing production lines that it seems unlikely anything will supersede the pressed-steel body for many years to come.
There seems no reason why with careful design the main stressed-steel fabrication should not be kept towards the middle of the car, so that a great deal of tearing and scraping can go on outside without upsetting the vehicle鈥檚 roadworthiness. This will help to control repair charges, allow the small-business panel-basher to return to the forefront of auto repairs, and eventually help to reduce the ever-rising insurance premiums.
From The New 杏吧原创, 16 May 1957