Hope the tire shop has good insurance. I bet he will never touch an exotic again, too much liability for so little money.

 

Unbelievable that you can total a car just by jacking it up. The damage just looks superficial.

 

If they total the car you might be able to keep the car or buy from the insurance company. Put the money in you pocket and drive the Aston until it is dead. It is a thought not the way you wanted your vantage to end up. Sorry about your car.

 

Agreed... I would like to better understand the frame shops diagnosis - Obviously the damage can not be repaired the way things are constructed but just thought the damage would be cosmetic only

Very sorry to hear the news about your Aston -

 

Yeah but the point of extrusion is that it is the strongest under compression, so the beam that goes from front to the back is the main piece that prevents the passenger cell from crumpling.

The superficial bend is now the weak point, under compression the rest of the extruded piece will not crumple or bend but the point where it is deformed will bend first, under much less force than it takes to bend if undamaged. I dont know how much strength is lost, but I would compare it to using a breaker bar with a tiny crack in it, might be superficial but it also might just snap off in your hands eventually.

 

A good demonstration is a soda can.

When it's perfectly undented, it's pretty strong when you push down on it. But if you put even a slight dent in the side, that point will give way quickly when pressure is applied down on the can.

 

I understand about shape deformation leading to weakness (I'm a civil engineer, we have to study that kind of stuff) but this is a road car, it shouldn't be possible to destroy it during normal handling. The bottom of the car could get dented like that or worse just by driving over some minor debris in the road or straddling the curbing on a racetrack corner.

 

Absolutely agree with you! It's pretty shocking that it'd deform so easily. Just giving the example to help illustrate mkzhang's explanation for us non-engineers

 

You're probably more educated on it than me then lol, I am just engineering by education and thats it. But you can see it from an manufacturer and insurance perspective though, if they can no longer guarantee it to perform at their original specification, they are exposed to liability if anything were to happen..

 

IMO, a repair can be done to make the car safe, however it will be noticeable and not attractive. if it were I, I would buy, car repair and drive and use the insurance towards a new one. One would have a beater and a sunday car. A blessing in disguise?

 

LOL, school was a long time ago for me!

The soda can analogy is a good one. There could also be issues with cold-work fatigue from bending and then un-bending the metal, like if you bend a paper clip a bunch of times and then it breaks.

My point is that it should not be so easy to catastrophically damage a car meant to drive on the street

 

Are you/they sure that the bent part is actually the structural longitudinal extrusion? I thought the extruded sections, including the rails, are thicker-section than the bent piece appears to be.

 

If at all possible, it would be interesting to see more pictures from different angles. Did the body shop put it up on a four post lift?

Regards

 

This all sounds bogus to me. You can't replace those rails; the car doesn't have a frame it is all bonded and riveted. A typical body shop is unqualified to assess damage, other than superficial, on an Aston. If the Aston dealership can't decide what is needed, then they should be contacting the factory, not some body shop.

 

more important ...did they lift it on its recommended lifting points?