> you can use that truck and do a lot of work with it without having to worry about the paint or breaking something
No. The flat shiny surfaces are more expensive, harder to manufacture, more brittle and more susceptible to denting/scratching than a normal curved car surface.
That thing is a nightmare to take care of. Best keep in the garage unless someone breathes on it and ruins the look.
For those downvoting, this comment does have a nugget of truth: it holds if the materials are equivalent. Curved surfaces are a lot stiffer and deform less easily than flat surfaces because they have some out-of-plane depth to their overall shape.
If you formed curved sheets out of this steel, it'd be tougher again than it is with flat surfaces.
>No. The flat shiny surfaces are more expensive, harder to manufacture, more brittle and more susceptible to denting/scratching than a normal curved car surface.
An easy analogy to explain why curved surfaces are stronger: imagine an egg that is a cube instead of a spheroid.
You see how an eggshell cube would be vastly more brittle than an egg, right?
> chose these flat surfaces in steel precisely for their lower cost, solidity and ease of manufacturing
To make an equivalently robust structure out of straight edges you need the steel to be much, much thicker. So yes on 'solidity', but no to the other two claims.
No. The flat shiny surfaces are more expensive, harder to manufacture, more brittle and more susceptible to denting/scratching than a normal curved car surface.
That thing is a nightmare to take care of. Best keep in the garage unless someone breathes on it and ruins the look.