Date:         Fri, 10 Nov 1995 19:11:59 -0800
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         wabbott@megatest.com (William Abbott)
Subject:      Aluminum Bodies

	Jaguar XKE (Stirling Moss called it the the "dumb blonde of sports
cars..."), AC Bristol/Shelby Cobra. Honda/Acura NSX. And Mercedes Benz used
a lot of aluminum doors and hoods on their two-door sporty jobs. I
helped paint one from the late 50s/early 60s once.

	Strength for wieght is about the same for aluminum and steel, you
get about three times the volume for wieght with aluminum, so for some
applications its better (airplanes) because the thickenss makes it stiffer.
You could make a 747 out of stainless steel, but the skin would be so
thin you'd have to add lots of extra stiffeners. But steel can be harder
than aluminum, so can be made springy, or ductile, over a wider range.
A physical chemist/metalurgist could tell us why.

	My family life was, er, colorful when I was a kid. At one
point Dad claimed if the family land-barge that had replaced the
68 Bus got in one more collision, he was going to buy a Land Rover
(aluminum body) and put a half a rail-road tie on each bumper, with
tires hung off that like a boat dock.