See The Work It Takes To Repair Tesla’s Aluminum Body Damage

Spoiler alert: it comes out looking great, you’d never know it had been damaged.

Andrei Nedelea

By: Andrei Nedelea

Mar 20, 2020 at 8:27am ET

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Aluminum as a material to make car bodies is preferred because it’s quite a bit lighter. However, should you damage any of the aluminum parts, the repair costs (and complexity) go up considerably over similar repairs for a steel body.

Most parts of the Tesla Model S’s body and structure are made from aluminum, so if you’re unlucky enough to get them damaged, you will have to shell out quite a bit to put them right again. Or, you can buy an already damaged car for cheap and work towards repairing it so that you get a usable car for cheap.

This is what Alex from Legit Street Cars did when he purchased this Tesla Model S. He bought it alongside another YouTuber, Samcrac, and even Rich Rebuilds chipped in to help with the rebuild. In the end, Alex ended up buying Samcrac out of its half of the damaged Model S and proceeded to get it fixed for himself.

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The car had plenty of damage that needed attention, including a very nasty ding in the roof. And since the roof is made from aluminum, the repairs needed to be carried out at a specialized shop that really put a lot of work into getting it right; it also had some damage behind the rear bumper, but this was not as hard to fix as the roof.

At the end of the repair process, which was done by professionals in a specialized shop, the car looks really good. It is one of those salvage auction success stories, and on top of looking nice, it still has access to Tesla’s Supercharger network.