How it's made: Panel Beating

One element of the automotive world sometimes not discussed is how cars were made. We've all heard the story of Henry Ford and his assembly line, but that just explains how the parts were all put together, not how the parts were actually fabricated. I'd like to focus specifically on how automobile bodies were made.

In traditional automobile construction, cars were basically built in a similar fashion to carriage, they had a frame with an exterior mounted to it. Like carriage, the bodies of most early automobiles had a wooden skeleton (mounted onto a steel frame) and had metal sheets wrapped around the wood. Mass produced cars were usually made of stamped, steel parts, much like cars are today. But custom bodied cars required a further step.

Because it was too costly to create stamping molds for low output vehicles, companies would instead build wooden bucks that appeared as the skeletal form of the car-to-be and then skilled craftsmen would beat metal panels across the bucks until they took the form of the bucks. This process of panel beating was often done with aluminum metal, since it was easier to work with than steel (and you probably thought Audi had hit on a new idea when it made it's A8 luxury car out of aluminum).

Companies used this metal banging technique for many decades. After coachbuilding died out in the US after WWII, the Europeans continued using wooden bucks for metal shaping well into the 1980's. In fact, most Ferrari's were made over wooden bucks, all the way up to the Ferrari 365 GT4 BB Berlineta of the late 1970's and early 1980's. Today, few designers still use bucks, but some specialized metal crafters, especially motorcycle fabrications, use the age old techniques to create unique bikes.

Images are of a 1929 Auburn 8-100 Cabin Speedster replica from the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, IN.