Definately a good thing. I used the living daylights out of my industrial strength suction cup ("Dent King" is is too complicated ) when I lived in San Fran full time some years ago (probally the capital of "dent and run" drivers).

 

Supposedly a toilet plunger can take out dents too.

 

i'd be willing to trade off up to 100lbs of weight for steel body panels. tighter gaps, more solid construction (plastic feels/looks REALLY flimsy), cheaper to fix/maintain, and the paint doest chip off as easily. but mostly its because I can't stand seeing 1-inch gaps. looks terrible.

 

what about the quick plastic aluminum forming procedure?

 

I won't argue your personal preference, but from my own experience, paint chips off a hard metal surface much more easily than off a slightly flexible plastic surface.

Panel gaps are one issue I think most people will agree is more prominant when using plastic panels over steel... but hopefully fitment can be improved vs the technology used in 1993 to provide smaller seams today.

 

Plastic saves weight. F4 is a half and half car. The front structure is all underneath the skins (it's a subframe car), but the rear structure is a unibody. In a unibody you need the steel to make the section large enough to get the required rigidity. With the subframe system up front the plastic just becomes a skin that really doesn't provide a lot of structure.

In a mass comparison between a non-structural plastic panel and a non-structural steel panel, the plastic wins every time.

The only way you can get steel to be mass-competitive in body panels is to ensure that the skin is stressed, which allows you to take material away from the supporting structure underneath. The plastic can't do that very well (yet...).

Since Camaro needed a subframe up front, there was no real point in using steel for the front fenders. Plastic could be used and mass and money were saved (stamping tools for fenders = BIG $$$) and you get the benefit of no rust issues and dent/ding resistance.

What everybody fails to mention in their personal stories about plastic is that any impact on the plastic that resulted in cracking would have made a terrible dent in steel - at that point (since the repairs would have required a good deal of metal work and paint), you're still ahead with the plastic.

The #1 cost in bodywork is LABOR. Plastic basically has no labor associated with it. Take off the old panel, slap on another one, paint it, wrench the gaps to where you want them and it's Miller Time.


Initially, Corvettes were made out of fiberglass because steel couldn't be formed adequately to support the styling of the car... then it became a hallmark of the brand... then with C4 the front fenders HAD to be out of plastic because of the clamshell hood... then everybody realized that the C5's hydroformed structure made plastic the only material that made sense...

And now, because of a combination of styling, processing, design and marketing issues, Corvettes are known as the "plastic wonder".

Kinda weird how the whole thing takes a life of it's own on and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.




PS - F5 needs to be plastic. It's just a better idea all around.

 

Steel. Or a mixture of both, like for the doors.

 

i beg to differ. we had to buy a $300 bumper cover for a trail blazer over a 2 mph impact... yes, 2mph!!! the back bumper on my car also has spider cracks from a very very small impact. Now on the other hand, the steel bumper on my truck suffered a 45mph blow from an explorer and it only resulted in a 6" dent (that isnt even all that noticeable because its behind the trim). this impact also resulted in well over 1k damages to the explorer. (im aware truck bumpers a just a slight bit beefier than car bumpers, but $300 for a bumper cover, and $150 to paint it all over a 2mph impact is rediculous.)

The weight arguement is rediculous. a '70 cuda ways less than a fourth gen camaro, regardless of the 100% iron motor, and all the steel body panels, bumpers, etc. I had to push one around a garage once. It was felt like i was pushing a lawnmower around...weightless compared to my 4th gen. And steel just flat out looks better. take the front quarters of the 4th gen for example. When i put 6 layers of zaino on my car i almost wish my car wasnt so shiny, cause the wavy front quarters stick out like a sore thumb compared to the hood and doors.

IMHO Plastic Sucks.

 

... and a 1970 'Cuda has no where near the level of safety, comfort, etc items that a 4th Gen has.

Air Bags, Air conditioning, ABS, ASR, computers, etc etc etc... they all add weight.

Comparing two different cars to try to prove the arguement that steel is equal or lighter than plastic makes zero sense at all...

 

now i voted plastic, because well, there is a reason why corvettes are fiberglass...

Actually, I don't want plastic, I'll take an all carbon fiber camaro please, for under 40,000 dollars... Okay that will never happen, but we can all dream can't we?

 

1) Your bumper cover is plastic PRECISELY because it is more expensive to fix a painted steel panel of reasonable weight in such a low impact collision.

2) $450 for such an impact is NOT unreasonable. Hit a steel fender sometime with an equivalent impact and get it costed to either fix the panel and repaint (if steel) or replace it and repaint.

3) Since you never fixed the bumper on the truck, how much is a replacement bumper??? Also, note that the replacement bumper is probably chromed AND NOT PAINTED. Just guess how much it would cost to take a chromed part that needed to be bumped out and metal-finished and get it re-plated. Cripes, the local plater charged me $75 to do a throttle body and that's with me doing all the prep work, and you're going to do an entire bumper, including metal finishing in the dented up area for $150???


Let's see here...

That Cuda have dual air bags?
Does it have door reinforcement beams?
Energy absorbing interior panels?
Catalytic converters?
What's the stiffness of the body in Hz?
Seat belt retractors at all four seating positions?
Does is knock down 30mpg highway?
Does it have 2000 impact spec bumpers?
How many radio speakers?
CD player and separate power amplifier?
Twilight Sentinel/DRL's?
Air conditioning?
A big old monstrous glass hatchback?
How big are the wheels and tires?
How many gears for the transmission?
EGR? PCV? AIR system?
Is the powertrain computer-controlled?
Individual coils for each cylinder?
Is it emissions compliant for 2002?
Does it have a body computer?
Can you hook up a Tech-II to the Cuda and get a diagnosis?
Anti-lock brakes?
Traction control?
Do the seats meet FMVSS 207/210?
Does the car meet FMVSS 202? 203? 201? 205? 206? 208? ECE 17.04?
Does it have power seat tracks?
Power steering?
Power locks?
Power windows?

In short, you might have put some of this stuff in the car later (maybe a CD player and an amp, for instance) but the content of the car is so much lower than a 4th gen Camaro as to be laughable.

Content = weight.

The Camaro would be HEAVIER with steel fenders.

 

I dont remember the exact ammount... but an entire new bumper for the truck wasnt too much more than the friggen plastic bumper cover (including paint price). if that trailblazer would have been in a real accident youd be paying for the waffle plastic and everything else too. regardless, i could go down to the junk yard and pick one up in good shape for probably $100 or so.

 

point is most certainly taken, but i was pointing out that the cuda is dimensionally a bigger car and still weighed significantly less. Its taller, longer, probably wider, has more back seat room, more trunk room, more engine space (obviously there is a lot less to fit in, im talking the size of the engine bay). the car also has a much beefier rear end than my camaro (aftermarket or not, im not sure). the list goes on.

 

I understand what you are getting at, but the fact remains, an empty keg (bigger) can weigh less than a plastic cooler that is loaded with beers! (smaller)

 

And that is why body shops rip people. Because they don't know better.
Plastic is extremely easy to fix opposed to steel.