The aluminum spaceframe
The spaceframe under a current Rolls-Royce is aluminum throughout: extrusions, castings, and sheet joined with rivets, structural adhesive, and welding only where the procedure permits it. It is not a platform shared down to a mass-market car, and the repair rules are its own.
Aluminum work happens in a separated area with dedicated tooling and its own consumables. Steel particles that settle onto aluminum embed and start galvanic corrosion that appears as blistering under paint a year or two later, by which point nobody links it to the repair. Rivets are single-use, structural adhesive is applied within its open time and allowed to cure properly, and every dissimilar-metal interface gets the specified corrosion protection.
Everything structural is measured in three dimensions against the manufacturer's specification before work starts and re-measured until it reads within tolerance. On a car this heavy, with this much insulation mass built into the body, damage rarely stops where it appears to.
- —Separated aluminum area with dedicated tooling
- —Spaceframe joints riveted, bonded, and welded only where permitted
- —Three-dimensional structural measuring, before and after
- —Coach door alignment and closing effort verified to specification
- —Bespoke paint matched by spray-out card and let-down panel
- —Hand-applied coachline continued across the repair
