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Brette,
What makes a Cobra different is the amount of draw and reverse curves the Cobra body has. The Cobra body is also one piece. Of course the hood deck and doors are seperate. But the cars you mention have seam lines, removable fenders, less draw, and of course, much smaller (if any at all) reverse curves. For example the area between the headlight and the radiator opening takes a real craftsman to make. Also like David implied the Cobra a method of wraping the aluminum onto the support tubes. Modern compaines do not wrap the body around a tube to hold the body on. They use glue, rivets, bolts, etc. As David said wraping (mounting the body on the frame) takes about 1/3 the total time in making the body. Also the Cobra body has a wired edge. No modern company wires the edges in their bodies. It takes a full day to wire the fenders in a Cobra. As you can see, having the body panels shaped is just the begining of the battle. It takes real craftsmen to put the body together and on the frame. Sure you can go to Mexico or wherever else, but it takes time, money, tooling, training, equipment, real craftmen dedicated to the project to build the car and of always more money.
For body forming search Google on Super Plastic forming.
Aluminum frams are built several diffent ways. Pouring molten aluminum into a die is called casting. I know of no manf. that is casting aluminum frames. Lotus for the Elise has their frame extruded and then bent into shape. They then glue the frame together. Renalt uses extrusions and rivets and glues their Spyder together. I believe Jag, Ferrari, and Audi are pressing some of the frame pieces and joining (spot welding, gluing, or riviting) the frame together. Some of the manufactures, I belive, are hydrofoming aluminum tubes like what is done with the Corvette with steel. Hope this helps.
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