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64-587: The Tasmanian Super Prix is a motor race for open-wheel racing cars eligible to international Formula 3 regulations held at Symmons Plains Raceway , near Launceston in Tasmania . First established in 2006, the race exists in a role to re-establish a signature race for domestic level open wheel racing cars in Australia, a role that has been largely left vacant since 1985 when the Australian Grand Prix became

128-578: A monocoque shell and more like a bowl. One thousand were produced. A key role in developing the unitary body was played by the American firm the Budd Company, now ThyssenKrupp Budd . Budd supplied pressed-steel bodywork, fitted to separate frames, to automakers Dodge , Ford , Buick , and the French company, Citroën . In 1930, Joseph Ledwinka , an engineer with Budd, designed an automobile prototype with

192-469: A motor vehicle to which all other components are attached, comparable to the skeleton of an organism. Until the 1930s, virtually every car had a structural frame separate from its body. This construction design is known as body-on-frame . By the 1960s, unibody construction in passenger cars had become common, and the trend to unibody for passenger cars continued over the ensuing decades. Nearly all trucks , buses, and most pickups continue to use

256-405: A C-shaped beam running the length of the vehicle. C-channel is typically more flexible than (fully) boxed of the same gauge. Hat frames resemble a "U" and may be either right-side-up or inverted, with the open area facing down. They are not commonly used due to weakness and a propensity to rust. However, they can be found on 1936–1954 Chevrolet cars and some Studebakers . Abandoned for a while,

320-530: A full unitary construction. Citroën purchased this fully unitary body design for the Citroën Traction Avant . This high-volume, mass-production car was introduced in 1934 and sold 760,000 units over the next 23 years of production. This application was the first iteration of the modern structural integration of body and chassis, using spot welded deeply stamped steel sheets into a structural cage, including sills, pillars, and roof beams. In addition to

384-470: A ladder frame, but the middle sections of the frame rails sit outboard of the front and rear rails, routed around the passenger footwells, inside the rocker and sill panels. This allowed the floor pan to be lowered, especially the passenger footwells, lowering the passengers' seating height and thereby reducing both the roof-line and overall vehicle height, as well as the center of gravity, thus improving handling and road-holding in passenger cars. This became

448-420: A ladder, the ladder frame is one of the oldest, simplest, and most frequently used under-body, separate chassis/frame designs. It consists of two symmetrical beams, rails, or channels, running the length of the vehicle, connected by several transverse cross-members. Initially seen on almost all vehicles, the ladder frame was gradually phased out on cars in favor of perimeter frames and unitized body construction. It

512-547: A lightweight, multi-tubular, triangulated frame over which an aerodynamic aluminum body was crafted. In 1994, the Audi A8 was the first mass-market car with an aluminium chassis, made feasible by integrating an aluminium space-frame into the bodywork. Audi A8 models have since used this construction method co-developed with Alcoa , and marketed as the Audi Space Frame . The Italian term Superleggera (meaning 'super-light')

576-542: A mechanic in the automotive industry, Harroun began competitive professional racing in 1906, winning the AAA National Championship in 1910. He was then hired by the Marmon Motor Car Company as chief engineer, charged with building a racecar intended to race at the first Indianapolis 500 , which he went on to win. He developed a revolutionary concept which would become the originator and forefather of

640-467: A platform frame. The frame of the Citroën 2CV used a minimal interpretation of a platform chassis under its body. In a (tubular) spaceframe chassis, the suspension, engine, and body panels are attached to a three-dimensional skeletal frame of tubes, and the body panels have limited or no structural function. To maximize rigidity and minimize weight, the design frequently makes maximum use of triangles, and all

704-570: A protection system to the cockpit called the "halo" , a wishbone-shaped frame aimed to deflect debris away from a driver's head. Despite initial criticism, including for the reason of obstructing the driver's vision, it gained some praise in the Formula 2 sprint race in Catalunya when Nirei Fukuzumi spun and had the back of his car land on fellow countryman Tadasuke Makino 's halo. In the 2018 Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix , McLaren driver Fernando Alonso

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768-748: A round of the Formula One World Championship . The race was first held in 2006 as the second of two rounds of the Australian Formula 3 championship held over the Symmons Plains round of the Shannons Nationals Motor Racing Championships . Originally held over 25 laps (60 km) of the 2.41 kilometre race track it was expanded to 30 laps (72 km) in 2007. The winner is awarded the John Bowe Trophy, named for

832-520: A separate frame as their chassis. The main functions of a frame in a motor vehicle are: Typically, the material used to construct vehicle chassis and frames include carbon steel for strength or aluminum alloys to achieve a more lightweight construction. In the case of a separate chassis, the frame is made up of structural elements called the rails or beams . These are ordinarily made of steel channel sections by folding, rolling, or pressing steel plate. There are three main designs for these. If

896-453: A subframe). The unibody is now the preferred construction for mass-market automobiles. This design provides weight savings, improved space utilization, and ease of manufacture. Acceptance grew dramatically in the wake of the two energy crises of the 1970s and that of the 2000s in which compact SUVs using a truck platform (primarily the USA market) were subjected to CAFE standards after 2005 (by

960-564: A unitary body with no separate frame, the Traction Avant also featured other innovations such as front-wheel drive . The result was a low-slung vehicle with an open, flat-floored interior. For the Chrysler Airflow (1934–1937), Budd supplied a variation – three main sections from the Airflow's body were welded into what Chrysler called a bridge-truss construction. Unfortunately, this method

1024-529: A weaker-than-usual frame and body framework welded to the chassis to provide stiffness, in 1960, Chrysler moved from body-on-frame construction to a unit-body design for most of its cars. Most of the American-manufactured unibody automobiles used torque boxes in their vehicle design to reduce vibrations and chassis flex, except for the Chevy II , which had a bolt-on front apron (erroneously referred to as

1088-577: Is 1,500 kilograms (3,200 lb). Open-wheeled racing is among the fastest in the world. Formula One cars can reach speeds in excess of 360 kilometres per hour (220 mph). At Autodromo Nazionale Monza , Antônio Pizzonia of BMW Williams F1 team recorded a top speed of 369.9 kilometres per hour (229.8 mph) (over 102 m/s) in the 2004 Italian Grand Prix . Since the end of the V10 era in 2006, such high speeds have not been reached, with later vehicles reaching around 360 kilometres per hour (220 mph). It

1152-748: Is difficult to give precise figures for the absolute top speeds of Formula One cars as the data are not generally released by teams. The 'speed traps' on fast circuits such as Monza give a good indication, but are not necessarily located at the point on the track where the car is travelling at its fastest. BAR Honda team recorded an average top speed of 400 kilometres per hour (250 mph) in 2006 at Bonneville Salt Flats , with unofficial top speed reaching 413 kilometres per hour (257 mph) using their modified BAR 007 Formula One car. Speeds on ovals can range in constant excess of 210–220 miles per hour (340–350 km/h), and at Indianapolis in excess of 230 miles per hour (370 km/h). In 2000, Gil de Ferran set

1216-470: Is expected in covered-wheel racing, as for example in NASCAR. Open-wheeled drivers must be extremely precise to avoid contact. Regulations tend to permit much lower open-wheel car weights than in categories that more closely resemble street-legal vehicles, such as sports , touring , and stock cars . For instance, a Formula One car must weigh at least 798 kilograms (1,759 lb); the minimum weight for NASCAR

1280-624: Is not always the case; some open-wheel categories raced primarily as development or amateur categories, such as Formula Ford or Formula Vee , do not permit the use of wings or ground effect aerodynamics. Some major races, such as the Singapore Grand Prix , Monaco Grand Prix (sanctioned by Formula One) and the Long Beach Grand Prix (sanctioned by IndyCar), are held on temporary street circuits . However, most open-wheel races are on dedicated road courses , such as Watkins Glen in

1344-404: Is now "considered standard in the industry". By 1960, the unitized body design was used by Detroit's Big Three on their compact cars ( Ford Falcon , Plymouth Valiant , and Chevrolet Corvair ). After Nash merged with Hudson Motors to form American Motors Corporation , its Rambler-badged automobiles continued exclusively building variations of the unibody. Although the 1934 Chrysler Airflow had

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1408-408: Is now seen mainly on large trucks. This design offers good beam resistance because of its continuous rails from front to rear, but poor resistance to torsion or warping if simple, perpendicular cross-members are used. The vehicle's overall height will be greater due to the floor pan sitting above the frame instead of inside it. A backbone chassis is a type of automotive construction with chassis that

1472-407: Is similar to the body-on-frame design. Instead of a relatively flat, ladder-like structure with two longitudinal, parallel frame rails, it consists of a central, strong tubular backbone (usually rectangular in cross-section) that carries the power-train and connects the front and rear suspension attachment structures. Although the backbone is frequently drawn upward into, and mostly above the floor of

1536-497: Is sometimes also referred to as a monocoque structure, because the car's outer skin and panels are made load-bearing, there are still ribs, bulkheads, and box sections to reinforce the body, making the description semi-monocoque more appropriate. The first attempt to develop such a design technique was on the 1922 Lancia Lambda to provide structural stiffness and a lower body height for its torpedo car body. The Lambda had an open layout with unstressed roof, which made it less of

1600-498: Is still used in modern-day sport utility vehicles such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Land Rover Defender . This design is also used in large vans such as Ford Transit , VW Crafter and Mercedes Sprinter . A subframe is a distinct structural frame component, to reinforce or complement a particular section of a vehicle's structure. Typically attached to a unibody or a monocoque, the rigid subframe can handle great forces from

1664-536: The Hornets and all-wheel-drive Eagles for a new type of frame called the "Uniframe [...] a robust stamped steel frame welded to a strong unit-body structure, giving the strength of a conventional heavy frame with the weight advantages of Unibody construction." This design was also used with the XJC concept developed by American Motors before its absorption by Chrysler, which later became the Jeep Grand Cherokee (ZJ) . The design

1728-709: The Monza Circuit the fastest lap in the 2021 Grand Prix ( Daniel Ricciardo 1:24.812) is more than six seconds per lap faster than the fastest closed-wheel racing car, an LMP1 sports car , and more than 20 seconds per lap faster than the DTM touring car lap record. Driving an open-wheel car is substantially different from driving a car with fenders. Virtually all Formula One and IndyCar drivers spend some time in various open-wheel categories before joining either top series. Open-wheel vehicles, due to their light weight, aerodynamic capabilities, and powerful engines, are often considered

1792-410: The 1960s, the boxed frames of conventional American cars were spot-welded in multiple places down the seam; when turned into NASCAR "stock car" racers, the box was continuously welded from end to end for extra strength. While appearing at first glance as a simple form made of metal, frames encounter significant stress and are built accordingly. The first issue addressed is "beam height", or the height of

1856-487: The Indy 500. Compared to covered-wheel race cars, open-wheeled cars allow more precise placement of the front wheels on the race course, as the tires are clearly visible to the driver. This allows the maximum potential of the cars to be achieved during cornering and passing. Furthermore, open-wheeled cars are less tolerant of vehicle-to-vehicle contact, which usually results in vehicle damage and retiring, whereas some level of contact

1920-773: The Tasmanian racing driver who twice won the Australian Drivers' Championship in 1984 and 1985 , before going on to win the Bathurst 1000 in 1989 and 1994 , as well as the Australian Touring Car Championship in 1995 . The inaugural Super Prix winner was Michael Trimble leading home Chris Alajajian by three seconds with British racer Ben Clucas finishing third. In 2007 Barton Mawer scored an upset win ahead of Leanne Tander and eventual series champion Tim Macrow . 2008 saw Tander go one better and take

1984-740: The US, Nürburgring in Germany, Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium and Silverstone in Great Britain. In the United States, some top-level open-wheel events are held on ovals, of both short track and superspeedway variety, with emphasis more on speed and endurance than the maneuverability required for road and street course events. The Whelen Modified Tour is the only opened wheeled race car series endorsed by NASCAR . This series races on most of NASCAR's most famous tracks in

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2048-560: The United States. Other asphalt modified series race on short tracks in the United States and Canada, such as Wyoming County International Speedway in New York. The best-attended oval race in the world is the annual Indianapolis 500 (Indy 500) in Speedway, Indiana , sanctioned by IndyCar; in the United States it is quite common to refer to open-wheel cars as IndyCars, because of their recognizable appearance and widespread popularity across America at

2112-687: The Whelen Modified Tour, where the engine is in front of the driver. Depending on the rules of the class, many types of open-wheelers have wings at the front and rear of the vehicle, as well as a very low and virtually flat undertray that helps achieve additional aerodynamic downforce pushing the car onto the road. While many other categories of racing cars produce downforce, the top categories of open-wheel racing cars (particularly Formula One and IndyCar ) produce far more downforce relative to their mass than any other racing category, allowing much higher corner speeds on comparable tracks. However, this

2176-455: The addition of a chassis. The terms "unibody" and "unit-body" are short for "unitized body", "unitary construction", or alternatively (fully) integrated body and frame/chassis. It is defined as: A type of body/frame construction in which the body of the vehicle, its floor plan and chassis form a single structure. Such a design is generally lighter and more rigid than a vehicle having a separate body and frame. Vehicle structure has shifted from

2240-431: The axles and then back down on the other side for bumper placement. Kick-ups do the same thing without curving down on the other side and are more common on the front ends. Another feature are the tapered rails that narrow vertically or horizontally in front of a vehicle's cabin. This is done mainly on trucks to save weight and slightly increase room for the engine since the front of the vehicle does not bear as much load as

2304-479: The back. Design developments include frames that use multiple shapes in the same frame rail. For example, some pickup trucks have a boxed frame in front of the cab, shorter, narrower rails underneath the cab, and regular C-rails under the bed. On perimeter frames, the areas where the rails connect from front to center and center to rear are weak compared to regular frames, so that section is boxed in, creating what are called "torque boxes". Named for its resemblance to

2368-639: The components needs to be stamped with ridges and hollows to give it strength. Platform chassis were used on several successful European cars, most notably the Volkswagen Beetle , where it was called "body-on-pan" construction. Another German example are the Mercedes-Benz "Ponton" cars of the 1950s and 1960s, where it was called a "frame floor" in English-language advertisements. The French Renault 4 , of which over eight million were made, also used

2432-435: The engine and drive train. It can transfer them evenly to a wide area of relatively thin sheet metal of a unitized body shell. Subframes are often found at the front or rear end of cars and are used to attach the suspension to the vehicle. A subframe may also contain the engine and transmission . It normally has pressed or box steel construction but may be tubular and/or other material. Examples of passenger car use include

2496-492: The fastest racing vehicles available and among the most challenging to master. Wheel-to-wheel contact is dangerous, particularly when the forward edge of one tire contacts the rear of another tire: since the treads are moving in opposite directions (one upward, one downward) at the point of contact, both wheels rapidly decelerate, torquing the chassis of both cars and often causing one or both vehicles to be suddenly and powerfully flung upwards (the rear car tends to pitch forward, and

2560-526: The forces in each strut are either tensile or compressive, never bending, so they can be kept as thin as possible. The first true spaceframe chassis were produced in the 1930s by Buckminster Fuller and William Bushnell Stout (the Dymaxion and the Stout Scarab ) who understood the theory of the true spaceframe from either architecture or aircraft design. The 1951 Jaguar C-Type racing sports car utilized

2624-598: The front car tends to pitch backward.) An example of this is the 2005 Chicagoland crash of Ryan Briscoe and Alex Barron . The lower weight of an open-wheel racecar enables better performance. While the exposure of the wheels to the airstream causes a very high aerodynamic drag at high speeds, it allows improved cooling of the brakes, which is important on road courses with their frequent changes of pace. In 2018, several single seater series such as Formula One, Formula 2 (with their new Dallara F2 2018 chassis), and Formula E (with their new Spark SRT05e chassis) introduced

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2688-400: The hat frame regained popularity when companies started welding it to the bottom of unibody cars, effectively creating a boxed frame. Originally, boxed frames were made by welding two matching C-rails together to form a rectangular tube. Modern techniques, however, use a process similar to making C-rails in that a piece of steel is bent into four sides and then welded where both ends meet. In

2752-553: The late 2000s truck-based compact SUVs were phased out and replaced with crossovers). An additional advantage of a strong-bodied car lies in the improved crash protection for its passengers. American Motors (with its partner Renault ) during the late 1970s incorporated unibody construction when designing the Jeep Cherokee (XJ) platform using the manufacturing principles (unisides, floorplan with integrated frame rails and crumple zones, and roof panel) used in its passenger cars, such as

2816-499: The main body of the car, and thus the open-wheel design became almost exclusively associated with racing vehicles. Formula One cars have almost exclusively used the open-wheel design throughout the history of the championship. The only notable exception was the "Monza body" variation of the Mercedes-Benz W196 racer of 1954–55, which covered the wheels with bodywork for aerodynamic reasons. Modern Formula One regulations mandate

2880-538: The main body. It was so successful that the Soviet post-war mass produced GAZ-M20 Pobeda of 1946 copied unibody structure from the Opel Kapitän. Later Soviet limousine GAZ-12 ZIM of 1950 introduced unibody design to automobiles with a wheelbase as long as 3.2 m (126 in). The streamlined 1936 Lincoln-Zephyr with conventional front-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout utilized a unibody structure. By 1941, unit construction

2944-573: The material is folded twice, an open-ended cross-section, either C-shaped or hat-shaped (U-shaped), results. "Boxed" frames contain closed chassis rails, either by welding them up or by using premanufactured metal tubing . By far the most common, the C-channel rail has been used on nearly every type of vehicle at one time or another. It is made by taking a flat piece of steel (usually ranging in thickness from 1/8" to 3/16", but up to 1/2" or more in some heavy-duty trucks ) and rolling both sides over to form

3008-523: The one-lap qualifying record of 241.428 miles per hour (388.541 km/h) at California Speedway . Even on tight non-oval street circuits such as the Grand Prix of Toronto , open-wheel Indy Cars attain speeds of 190 miles per hour (310 km/h). Regardless of top speeds, Formula One open-wheel race cars hold the outright lap record at the circuits where they race due to their combination of top speed, acceleration, and cornering abilities. For example, at

3072-473: The open-wheel configuration. A typical open-wheeler has a minimal cockpit, sufficient only to enclose the driver's body, with the head exposed to the air. In the Whelen Modified Tour and other short track modified series, the driver's head is contained in the car. In modern cars, the engine is often located directly behind the driver and drives the rear wheels; except in asphalt modified cars, such as

3136-587: The overall height of the vehicles regardless of the increase in the size of the transmission and propeller shaft humps since each row had to cover frame rails as well. Several models had the differential located not by the customary bar between axle and frame, but by a ball joint atop the differential connected to a socket in a wishbone hinged onto a crossmember of the frame. The X-frame was claimed to improve on previous designs, but it lacked side rails and thus did not provide adequate side impact and collision protection. Perimeter frames replaced this design. Similar to

3200-442: The prevalent design for body-on-frame cars in the United States, but not in the rest of the world, until the unibody gained popularity. For example, Hudson introduced this construction on their 3rd generation Commodore models in 1948. This frame type allowed for annual model changes , and lower cars, introduced in the 1950s to increase sales – without costly structural changes. The Ford Panther platform , discontinued in 2011,

3264-521: The race would return for the 2010 season and it was allocated to the Hidden Valley round of the 2010 championship and has been held there since. Moved to an early season date, Tom Tweedie won the 2010 race, leading home Team BRM pair of Ben Barker and Andrew Waite. Open-wheel American racecar driver and constructor Ray Harroun was an early pioneer of the concept of a lightweight single-seater, open-wheel "monoposto" racecar. After working as

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3328-403: The single-seater (i.e. monoposto) racecar design. Harroun has also been credited by some as pioneering the rear-view mirror which appeared on his 1911 Indianapolis 500 winning car, though he himself claimed he got the idea from seeing a mirror used for a similar purpose on a horse-drawn vehicle in 1904. Prior to World War II , street automobiles generally had wheels that protruded beyond

3392-503: The start of the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix , Romain Grosjean collided with Daniil Kvyat in which his car broke in two and burst into flames as it split the barrier. The halo helped protect Grosjean from possible decapitation while it allowed him to escape from the fire. Unibody A vehicle frame , also historically known as its chassis , is the main supporting structure of

3456-648: The traditional body-on-frame architecture to the lighter unitized/integrated body structure that is now used for most cars. Integral frame and body construction requires more than simply welding an unstressed body to a conventional frame. In a fully integrated body structure, the entire car is a load-carrying unit that handles all the loads experienced by the vehicle – forces from driving and cargo loads. Integral-type bodies for wheeled vehicles are typically manufactured by welding preformed metal panels and other components together, by forming or casting whole sections as one piece, or by combining these techniques. Although this

3520-453: The transition areas from front to center and center to rear reduce beam and torsional resistance and is used in combination with torque boxes and soft suspension settings. This is a modification of the perimeter frame, or of the backbone frame, in which the passenger compartment floor, and sometimes the luggage compartment floor, have been integrated into the frame as loadbearing parts for strength and rigidity. The sheet metal used to assemble

3584-410: The vehicle's main body, though they were typically covered with mudguards to protect the car body and following traffic from water and mud spray. With the advent of unibody vehicle construction, the desire to maximise interior space, to improve aerodynamics, and aircraft-inspired styling trends of the era, by the end of the 1950s the majority of new road-registerable vehicles had wheels that were under

3648-433: The vehicle, the body is still placed on or over (sometimes straddling) this structure from above. This is the design used for the full-size American models of General Motors in the late 1950s and early 1960s in which the rails from alongside the engine seemed to cross in the passenger compartment, each continuing to the opposite end of the crossmember at the extreme rear of the vehicle. It was specifically chosen to decrease

3712-533: The vertical side of a frame. The taller the frame, the better it can resist vertical flex when force is applied to the top of the frame. This is the reason semi-trucks have taller frame rails than other vehicles instead of just being thicker. As looks, ride quality, and handling became more important to consumers, new shapes were incorporated into frames. The most visible of these are arches and kick-ups. Instead of running straight over both axles , arched frames sit lower—roughly level with their axles—and curve up over

3776-458: The win, but it would not be enough for Tander to defeat British driver James Winslow to the title victory as the final round of the season. Nathan Caratti finished second ahead of Tim Macrow. The 2009 race was cancelled along with the entire Symmons Plains round of Shannons Nationals Motor Racing Championships after several support categories withdrew from the meeting removing the meetings financial viability. Formula 3 organisers had vowed that

3840-445: Was no longer a new idea for cars, "but it was unheard of in the [American] low-price field [and] Nash wanted a bigger share of that market." The single unit-body construction of the Nash 600 provided weight savings and Nash's Chairman and CEO, George W. Mason was convinced "that unibody was the wave of the future." Since then, more cars were redesigned to the unibody structure, which

3904-515: Was not ideal because the panel fits were poor. To convince a skeptical public of the strength of unibody, both Citroën and Chrysler created advertising films showing cars surviving after being pushed off a cliff. Opel was the second European and the first German car manufacturer to produce a car with a unibody structure – production of the compact Olympia started in 1935. A larger Kapitän went into production in 1938, although its front longitudinal beams were stamped separately and then attached to

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3968-432: Was one of the last perimeter frame passenger car platforms in the United States. The fourth to seventh generation Chevrolet Corvette used a perimeter frame integrated with an internal skeleton that serves as a clamshell. In addition to a lowered roof, the perimeter frame allows lower seating positions when that is desirable, and offers better safety in the event of a side impact. However, the design lacks stiffness because

4032-636: Was sent airborne after being hit from behind by the Renault of Nico Hülkenberg and struck the halo of Sauber driver Charles Leclerc , thereby saving the Monegasque driver from a visor strike. In 2019 , the newly-formed FIA Formula 3 Championship introduced a halo to their new chassis which was unveiled at the 2018 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix . In 2020 , the IndyCar Series adopted a halo combined with an aeroscreen, built by Red Bull Advanced Technologies. At

4096-508: Was trademarked by Carrozzeria Touring for lightweight sports-car body construction that only resembles a space-frame chassis. Using a three-dimensional frame that consists of a cage of narrow tubes that, besides being under the body, run up the fenders and over the radiator, cowl, and roof, and under the rear window, it resembles a geodesic structure . A skin is attached to the outside of the frame, often made of aluminum. This body construction is, however, not stress-bearing and still requires

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