Question: what would the best material to build a car out of

Jarrod Hart answered on 13 Jun 2016:

Nice question!

Cars are mainly made of steel because it is strong, the trouble is it is quite heavy. They have made the panels thinner but you can only go so thin before the car feels ‘cheap’.

Sports cars are often made of aluminium and indeed jaguar has some nice aluminium models – it is lighter ‘for a certain strength’ but much more expensive.

Formula one cars use very strong steels for the chassis (‘bones’) but use carbon fibre composite for the body and aerodynamic parts. This is very strong but every part has to be hand made so far too expensive for mass manufacture until it can be automated!

Plastic is still too floppy and it can’t handle heat too well.
Wood is actually not a bad material, also quite strong and light, and was used for ages for carriages and early cars (you can still get a wooden cars, google it!) The trouble again with wood is that it is labour intensive to work with – often the choice of material is not about it’s strength or beauty, but about how easy it is to mass produce…

So the best material? I would say some sort of 3-d printed carbon fibre that has yet to be invented…. maybe you will do it!