Finally We Get Some Truth on Plastic Body Panels
Automotive body panels have been the Holy Grail for plastics for more than 50 years. And it seems as if I've been writing about it for almost that long. The whole idea took off with a bang in 1953 when GM engineers sheathed the first Corvettes with an FRP (fiberglass) body. It was light; it didn't corrode; it resisted dings; it was new.
The major producers of engineering plastics all set up development and sales offices in Detroit and went after the market with a full-court press. There were big successes, such as intake manifolds, fuel tanks, fascia, and instrument panels. But body panels were never a hit. FRP processes are slow and are still only suited for low-production cars. The injection molding of thermoplastics is speedier, but has not been widely used.
The reason? I haven't got one. But I still see the big plastics companies sponsoring concept cars with plastic body panels.
A new book by Detroit auto guy Bob Lutz, however, does get to the issues. Lutz has held executive roles, mostly in product development, with Chrysler, BMW, Ford, and General Motors. His book is called Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business .
He relates the story of how GM launched the Saturn in 1990 with thermoplastic body panels. The Saturn cars were the first to use all vertical body panels molded in thermoplastics. Saturn commercials used to show shopping carts bouncing off a Saturn without leaving any marks.
Saturns used Pulse alloy for the door skins, and GTX for the quarter panels. Pulse, sold by Dow Plastics, was a blend of polycarbonate and ABS (PC/ABS). GTX was a blend of polyphenylene oxide and polyamide (PPO/PA) by GE Plastics (now Sabic Innovative Plastics).
After reviewing the reasons for using plastic in the Saturn, Lutz states:
"In practice, however, the plastic panels were finicky. They took longer to produce than conventional stamped steel, and they grew and shrank when the temperature changed, requiring the cars to have wide, unappealing gaps around the doors, hood and trunk for clearance."
Plastics have a higher coefficient of linear thermal expansion (CLTE) than steel, and require more space to grow and shrink. Efforts to improve CLTE properties of plastic compounds with fillers and backbone tweaking haven't resolved the problem.
GM moved back to steel for body panels when it launched the Saturn Sky roadster, Aura sedan, and Outlook cross/utility vehicle in 2006, and the Vue CUV in 2007.
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record at 32 hours, 7 minutes, and one of the most meticulous open-road scofflaws around. Perhaps the strangest part of this video--obfuscated voices and sped-up driving footage included--is the choice of the car used for the feat: a Saturn Sky.
GM moved back to steel for body panels when it launched the Saturn Sky roadster, Aura sedan, and Outlook cross/utility vehicle in 2006, and the Vue CUV in 2007. Interestingly, when GM first showed the Volt concept car in January 2007, it featured a
Dulsky pointed to the left of Vega. And there was Altair, lower and right, completing the Summer Triangle. Next came Saturn, then the earliest lights in the constellation Scorpius. Minute by minute, the sky was thicker and thicker with stars.
This production facility was responsible for models like the Chevrolet Corsica and Beretta, then moving on to create the sporty Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice Roadsters before shutting down in July of 2009. General Motors originally opened the plant
The winged and squat shuttle may never have had the swagger and romance of the Saturn-lofted Apollo, but there was plenty of Buck Rogers to go with the vehicle, which had been likened to a celestial dump truck at the start of its utilitarian life.
Toyota FR-S Spec'd - Saturn Sky Forums: Saturn Sky Forum
These stats are very telling. First, check out the low torque and limited powerband. HP comes from the revs, so driving this vehicle in performance mode will require lots of powerband management (remember the Mazda RX8 and the Honda S2000?). This is one reason the automatic option is anemic. It's hard to get good automatic performance out of a car designed to pounded in a narrow powerband. But the manual will be loved by drivers who like to manage the torque. The chassis is "over engineered" (like the RX8). But unlike the Wankel constrained Mazda, the drive train on the FR-S seems ready made for performance boost from tunes and forced induction. This car might be 200HP out of the box, but I won't be surprised if it isn't pushing 300HP (and beyond) within a year or two of first sales. The first tuners and upgraders will have a nice sleeper car...vs stock ponies...or even a kappa or two.
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