[linkjuice4all]

The change to unibody construction in the 70s/80s and the more-recent move to 'gigapressing' an entire car with body work has unfortunately made repair much more difficult.

In the past body shops would realign frames, pull body work back into shape, and weld in new pieces but it's just not safe and practical to do that with unibody vehicles even if you did have the tooling and machinery to ensure that it was done right and everything is actually back into factory spec and alignment.

It's almost a shame that the electric vehicle 'skateboard' concept (essentially a rolling chassis in industrial/truck vehicle terminology) didn't really get anywhere - but I have to imagine that design constraints, extra weight from attaching the body to the chassis, and other relevant factors that pushed us into unibody vehicles in the first place also made concept unfeasible.

[sokoloff]

> weld in new pieces but it's just not safe and practical to do that with unibody vehicles

Unibody cars are repaired safely all the time, whether for collision or rust repair. It may have been easier in the body-on-frame days, but it safe and practical now still.

[vel0city]

Its considerably more labor intensive though, which means $$$.