Factory aluminum bodies - what cars had 'em?

Marmon, Stanley Steamer, Franklin, Rolls Royce.

 

Again, thanks for all the replies - this is the stuff I've been looking for! The tip on the Miatas is a good one - they're curvy enough that the hood/trunklid could be used for sure. The British stuff as well - now to go find it...

Steve

 

Lots of current production Audis - A2 A6 A8.

Look for crashed ones with damaged panels that are unusable for anything but what you are planning.

You may find that this is a cheaper route than chopping up lightweight Healeys and E Types ;-)

 

Im about to purchase this...

its alloy, and while i havent seen it yet, im guessing its a factory made car..anyone Know what?

 

Austin Healey, some were all aluminum, but all had some. But for what it would cost you to do that you could buy Covell's video on how to work aluminum on the cheap and be $$$$ ahead (or buy one of his English wheel kits and the video's for that, and still be $$$$ ahead).

 

Chevy Venture minivans, the ones right after the dustbuster luminas, have an aluminum hood.

We have a hulk of a '29 Franklin and the rear of the body is aluminum, although the cowl and doors are steel. I think you'll find any of the lower-production cars of that time may have had aluminum just because it was easier to shape for certain parts of the body.

But aluminum can become brittle with age, particularly if it sees a lot of vibration.


Now they do make a lot of highway signs out of aluminum.... we were laughing at the demo derby the other day because some guy'd made a firewall over the trunk opening out of a huge-*** stop sign.. and left the sign side facing into the interior of the car.

 

Veritas made both alloy and steel bodied cars

And this JBW pictured on the left here it's an alloy body

 

You lucky boy!!!

 

GM used some aluminum panels in the late 70's / early 80's when they were "downsizing" their car line. Trouble is...most of the GM cars of the era were quite boxy with mainly flat panels.

Ones I know of:
Olds 88 aluminum hood
Olds Cutl*** aluminum hood
Chevy Malibu aluminum trunklid

They were trying hard to shed weight those years, but not all cars had the light weight stuff. Maybe they needed to have a few models that met some standard for fuel efficiency???

Also, many had aluminum bumpers, aluminum brake drums and aluminum intake manifolds.

 

A friend of mine here in town has a 29 Hudson 4 door that is aluminum.

You might also google 1954 Hudson Italia, which had an aluminum body

 

I heard that an aluminum Modet T sedan in fantastic shape is stored away here in town.

My books & resources & the Web from what i've found don't really specify what year T sedans have aluminum bodies But they reference details of changes away from aluminum. I saw a post to this thread that referred to aluminum Model T bodies.

Does someone here have some facts to the production of Aluminum T bodies. I've got the production numbers & serial # of T's but not the body detail breaking out aluminum.

Also Bizzarini had an aluminum body on a Vette ch***is in the mid 60"s. One was stored down the street from me in Michigan & the owner used my 66 vette for reference info.

 

The Porsche 550 Spyder James Dean was killed in was made entirely of aluminum.....I think even the ch***is.....certainly the motor and trans..........as a side note, George Barris bought the car after the wreck, and later sold it........further, there is a 1 million dollar offer to buy the car if anyone knows where it is. Stupid move George

 

my dad restored a 25 lincoln which had all alum body panels. it looked good without paint as i remember

 

There used to be an aluminum es*** in the bush north of town here, just like the one pictured above

 

1938 Packard Darrins had a 3/4 inch cast aluminum cowl. Apparently the first few built were regular Packard cowls (sheet metal; they rolled and wallowed all over the road like a pregnant hippo. After bracing proved unsatisfactory, ol' Dutch Darrin had the cowl cast in aluminum. Problem solved.

 

I know you were asking for old cars, but some newer panels that you could use out of the junkyards (you mentiond Miata) are the hoods of some of the newer Ford products. My dad does paintless dent repair and he could name off a list of aluminum hooded cars if you want it. (the dents don't work out of them as easily as a steel hood).....

Malcolm

 

about 35 years ago (in Saginaw, Oregon) My dad and I went to look at an old center door T in a dimly lit, narrow garage beside a grocery store that an old guy was thinking about getting redone for the family. no rust on the body...just some corrosion found where the paint had blistered off...that (and a magnet) was the tip off it was aluminum...That car was sold not long after that due to the expense to restore the car was more than they wanted to spend at the time. I wonder if yours is the same car.... we heard that someone down on the coast had bought it unrestored. Thats all I know about it.

 

If you are looking for body panel to modify, Land Rover body panels are relatively flat and should be realitivly cheap and easy to come by. The CDN military often will s**** old land rovers and they can be had relatively inexpensively. Also older Range Rovers have aluminum body panels, and since they have a lousy resale value, they should be cheap as well.

-Jeff

 

63 Max Wedge mopars 63 Z-LL Impalas 64 race Hemis had aluminium front clips bumpers and bumper brackets.64 Hemis had aluminium doors as well.

 

A couple I didn't see mentioned or I missed it:

Citroen ID19 has an aluminum hood or roof, I don't remember which.

Plymouth Prowler has aluminum doors, hood, deck lid.

Mercedes SL models from the 60s or so had aluminum doors, possibly hood?

 

I was surprised to find an aluminum toe board in my old 47 Ford Woody.

 

Really?
That might explain a few things.

 

If your going to put together aluminum panels from various sources , do your homework. There are many different alloys of aluminum used in autos over the years. Mixing the old aluminum alloys with the newer ones can result in some difficulties in workability of the aluminum and the welding of different alloys to one another. You may be better off starting fresh with new metal and forming it to shape.

 

FWIW, for all the trouble that you're going to have finding rare aluminum panels, butchering them and s***ching them back together, you could aquire some metal forming skills and make them yourself. Don't worry about perfection, that only comes with years of experience (and even then it's an illusion.)

Also, isn't anyone bothered by the basic premise of "I want to find some really rare cars and chop them up"? There is a limited pool of cool old cars. It's one thing to alter a car that was made in the hundreds of thousands, quite another to take a short list and make it even shorter.

Have some respect and patience. learn some more skills and you and all of us will be better for it.

 

Bro, you're not the only one that didn't get the first post. He says in the second sentence "any that are not desirable?"
"Pay attention 007!"

This kind of got OT into a knowledge fest. At least I admitted it.

I laugh at the idea that someone would spend the $250,000 it costs for rare hemi or Z-11 front end parts and cut them up like beer cans. Not gonna happen.

 

Like the hoods of certain Mercedes Diesel cars.
And some Volvos. They are out there.

 

I get your point, but aluminum has always been a relatively expensive exotic metal compared to steel, and practically any use of it for attractive body panels is rare. I'd suggest that rare=desireable. I'm generally not a purist by any means, but the basic concept seems flawed.

Also, it's not like body panels go together like some sort of fancy jigsaw puzzle and you end up with a pretty picture. Even if you had a junkyard full of aluminum boddied cars to choose from, matching panels up and cleanly fairing them in takes serious skill. If you have that kind of skill, why not build from scratch? If you don't have that kind of skill, the end product is gonna look funky, so why not just pound/roll out new ones and have scratch-built funkiness, as opposed to Frankenstein funkiness?

As long as I'm on a roll, aluminum panels don't save that much weight relative to steel. If you want to really save lbs. concentrate on the chasis and driveline choices.

 

Wasn't the canadian Avanti made of aluminum?

 

I had a '63 Maserati 3500GTI with an aluminum body made by Touring. They called it the 'Superleggera' type construction with the panels attached to a inner frame of small diameter steel tubes. Insulation was used between the steel and aluminum, but where it broke down over time there was a high potential of corrosion to the aluminum.

Steve

 

If you are looking for s**** sheets, many busses and trains are made with aluminium panels. The busses should be easier to find. Also Airstream RVs.