• Useless car fact #3: coachbuilding

    In the 1800s there was a demand for custom built stagecoaches, but when the automobile became the most popular form of transportation, the coach building companies had to adapt to the automobile, thus, they took orders for custom built car bodies, since all cars back then where body on frame, they could just take the chassis of a car (with drivetrain, steering colom, wheels ect ect) and built a custom body to mount on the frame. The way they made said body was making a rough shape of the body (according to customer requests) out of wood, and then laying sheet metal over the wood, and shaping the metal over the wood making the overall shape of the car. Then they would ad the rest of the features (windows, doors, interior ect) and then mounting the body to the frame of the car. But once the unibody became popular, it was way harder for coachbuilders to work there magic. Thus killing the industry off entirely. Nowadays we have companies like LB works (liberty walk), but they don’t compare to the swooping curves and soft lines of coachbuilt cars.

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