Body shop
A body construction company deals with the construction, conversion or repair of bodies for automobiles or trailers and semitrailers .
New construction, conversions and superstructures
- New building : The company usually purchases the chassis and drive elements from automobile manufacturers and uses their own bodies. In the case of passenger cars , this mainly happened until the 1940s, before the self-supporting body was developed. Nowadays it mainly happens with buses , mobile homes and special bodies for trucks (e.g. furniture vans, fire engines ).
- Conversion : The company purchases complete vehicles and converts them into models that the original automobile manufacturer does not offer, for example station wagons , ambulances , hearses or stretch limousines . A special form is the subsequent armoring of vehicles.
In the past there were a large number of coachbuilders operating in the passenger car sector, and these companies flourished during the 1920s and early 1930s. They often body vehicles on behalf of an automobile manufacturer.
However, the transition to self-supporting bodies made it difficult or impossible to assemble bodies on third-party chassis, so that many body construction companies went bankrupt.
Bodywork companies often manufacture niche vehicles that the large automobile companies cannot manufacture by designing their production differently. Coupés and convertibles were and are often built by external companies, for example Heuliez , Bertone and Karmann , who manufacture convertibles for numerous brands, or Pininfarina , which manufactured station wagons and SUVs. Bodywork companies often take on large parts of the development work on the models, such as the design or the mechanics of a roof.
The large automobile groups are increasingly developing and manufacturing small series and niche models themselves, so that numerous body construction companies stopped manufacturing vehicles, such as Baur , Matra and Maggiora , Karmann was taken over by VW after bankruptcy.
Series: VW Beetle ...
... and body from another manufacturer: VW Karmann-Ghia
Before: Mercedes-Benz W115
... and afterwards: Mercedes-Benz converted into a station wagon
Mercedes-Benz W115 converted by Binz into an ambulance
Selection of body shop companies
An overview of the manufacturers of automobile bodies contains the list of body manufacturers .
See also
literature
- Ralf JF Kieselbach: Technique of Elegance - A History of Automobile Design in Germany up to 1965 using the example of Auto Union and its predecessor companies . Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung Beuermann GmbH, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-87584-864-0
- Halwart Schrader: special automobile bodies, special versions of German passenger cars 1906–1986 . BLV-Verlag 1985, ISBN 3-405-13173-1