A Brief History (1900-1960s) of Automobile Chassis and Body Design

All Steel early Dodge

1934 Press
1934 Traction Avant
Mid-1930s GM Turret top steel body top

Hi folks -- I found this handout in one of my folders as I was sorting my materials on auto history and thought it provides a good overview one important aspect of development that I often neglect.

Origins to 1920 --

• Coach structures -- phaeton, tonneau, landau, wagonette, etc.
• Wooden frame/wooden body panels
• introduction of steel and aluminum sheets
• Development of hammer, dolly,and buck -- hand formed techniques
• Metal sheet body on a wooden frame
• 1915 Hayes body, and notions of structural functionality
• Introduction of the Budd body-- entire steel car
• 1922 Lancia Lambda -- monocoque structure with body and frame finding a common solution in the load bearing body
• X-frame structure of the late 1920s Auburn

1930s & 1940s

• Citroen Traction Avant (1934) -- mass production of the monocoque body
• Small scale introduction of Chrome-Moly steel -- racing car bodies
• Use of aluminum alloys -- Marmon
• GM Steel Turret top
• Riveted aluminum body -- 1948 Land Rover

1950s

• Stamped steel unibody construction and mass production
• Fiberglass body (1953 Corvette) over steel space frame
• Maserati Birdcage (1959) complex tubular chassis skeleton

1959 Maserati Birdcage

1960s

• Backbone chassis (1962 Lotus Elan)
• Fiberglas reinforced plastics (Autobianchi Stellina) 1963
• Persistence of Body-on-Frame solution for mass produced cars in U.S.
  

  

  1962 Lotus Elan