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Wouldn't it be more easy to maintain because you could just sand and blend away defects as opposed to dealing with paint where flaws are more noticeable.
by preommr 7y ago
Wouldn't it be more easy to maintain because you could just sand and blend away defects as opposed to dealing with paint where flaws are more noticeable.
- serf 7y agopaint can be filled and repainted, bare metal cannot without exposing fillers and ruining the finish. realistically no one is blending the metal during most repair jobs; the panels either get replaced or bondo'd, sadly -- unless we're talking about vintage or nostalgic cars that have inherent issues with panel supply.
- mikepurvis 7y agoSounds like their plan for this is just that the panels are super thick and therefore really hard to dent, though I don't know what that means for crumple zones and safety. Perhaps there's an argument here that the bare metal will acquire a kind of patina, that the accumulation of small blemishes will over time contribute to an attractive worn look? That's certainly not how cars conventionally age, but it will be interesting to see what a Cybertruck looks like once it's got 200k miles on it.
- czinck 7y agoSmall scratches, sure, but dents are way harder to deal with on a stainless steel body panel. A dent stretches the metal, so you have to un-stretch and reshape it perfectly, which is time consuming and unless you take it to a shop that specializes in Deloreans no one will know how to do it. Compared to a regular painted body panel, everyone in every body shop has filled a dent with bondo, sanded it flush, and sent the panel to the paint booth hundreds of times. The painting itself can be finicky, but that's where the practice comes in. Delorean assumed body panels would just be replaced when damaged, not repaired.