A chassis is an underlying supporting structure – such as a skeleton in an animal, or the metal frame in a television on which the circuit boards and other components are mounted.
In a motor vehicle, a traditional chassis gave the vehicle structural strength as well as a platform on which to mount the engine, the wheels, the transmission, and all the other mechanical components. Also bolted onto this frame was the body, or coachwork. Originally made of wood, the vehicle chassis soon became an open steel ladder-frame structure.
A separate chassis is still the preferred structural basis for commercial vehicles, which are often sold without a body at all but with the running gear mounted to a chassis only, or in a 'cowl-and-chassis' or 'cab-and-chassis' configuration so that specialized bodies can be fitted to them for different purposes.
Body-on-frame used to be the preferred way of building passenger vehicles too, because it allowed new models of vehicles with different body styles to be released without having to retool most of the mechanical and structural components. In the 1960s, most manufacturers switched to vehicle designs which either partially or wholly integrated the bodywork into a single unit with the chassis so that the body became part of the structure of the vehicle rather than just an external skin.
The idea of a single shell – or 'monocoque' – design was first used in aircraft, then spread to automobiles, and became popular with manufacturers because with less of a chassis component it was both quicker to manufacture and lighter in weight, therefore costing less in both material and labor. The spot-welded unit body process, known as 'Unibody', is the predominant vehicle construction technology today.
High performance racing cars today have no chassis at all, their structural strength coming from their light, stiff, and stable body shells molded from newer lightweight materials such as carbon fiber reinforced plastics.
A chassis is an underlying supporting structure – such as a skeleton in an animal, or the metal frame in a television on which the circuit boards and other components are mounted.
In a motor vehicle, a traditional chassis gave the vehicle structural strength as well as a platform on which to mount the engine, the wheels, the transmission, and all the other mechanical components. Also bolted onto this frame was the body, or coachwork. Originally made of wood, the vehicle chassis soon became an open steel ladder-frame structure.
A separate chassis is still the preferred structural basis for commercial vehicles, which are often sold without a body at all but with the running gear mounted to a chassis only, or in a 'cowl-and-chassis' or 'cab-and-chassis' configuration so that specialized bodies can be fitted to them for different purposes.
Body-on-frame used to be the preferred way of building passenger vehicles too, because it allowed new models of vehicles with different body styles to be released without having to retool most of the mechanical and structural components. In the 1960s, most manufacturers switched to vehicle designs which either partially or wholly integrated the bodywork into a single unit with the chassis so that the body became part of the structure of the vehicle rather than just an external skin.
The idea of a single shell – or 'monocoque' – design was first used in aircraft, then spread to automobiles, and became popular with manufacturers because with less of a chassis component it was both quicker to manufacture and lighter in weight, therefore costing less in both material and labor. The spot-welded unit body process, known as 'Unibody', is the predominant vehicle construction technology today.
High performance racing cars today have no chassis at all, their structural strength coming from their light, stiff, and stable body shells molded from newer lightweight materials such as carbon fiber reinforced plastics.
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