Aluminum F-150 proves less costly to repair

Bob Tomes was among the Ford Motor Co. dealers who sank tens of thousands of dollars into new equipment and training to repair the automaker's aluminum F-150 pickup when it debuted in late 2014.

Mother Nature showed him that it was the right call.

Back-to-back Texas hailstorms in the spring of 2017 filled his eponymous dealership's service bays in McKinney with dented and damaged pickups. But the F-150's modular architecture and extensive training given to his nine certified technicians resulted in speedy repairs that cost as much as $2,000 less than similarly damaged steel-bodied vehicles, Tomes said.

"We were called upon to make that investment, and you have to step up," Tomes told Automotive News last week. "I think we're very pleased with how it turned out."

So is Ford, whose big bet on aluminum for its hugely profitable F-series franchise prompted persistent questions — and relentless attacks from rivals — about whether the pickup would cost more to repair and insure. But insurance data shows that an extraordinary effort to train dealers, educate insurers and design the vehicle to be as repair-friendly as possible helped make it ultimately cheaper to fix and replace than the previous generation, a goal to which Ford engineers aspired from the project's inception.

"It was our moonshot," Dave Johnson, Ford's global director of service engineering operations, said in an interview. "We wanted them to be insurable on par with a steel F-150."

Aluminum is lighter than steel, but it generally costs more and sustains damage more easily. Switching materials helped Ford cut the weight of the F-150 by up to 700 pounds but had the potential to make the company's top-selling and most lucrative vehicle line vulnerable if buyers began to perceive the trucks as weaker or more expensive to own.

The Highway Loss Data Institute, an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, has not studied overall insurance costs, which are determined by factors such as a driver's age, gender and location, but its latest data on collision claim coverage yielded surprising results. Collision claim severity for aluminum F-150s is roughly 7 percent lower than on the steel predecessor, in part because of cheaper repairs. But the frequency of collision claims has risen about 7 percent, resulting in an unchanged overall loss.

When the pickup was introduced, insurers predicted that costs would hold steady unless claims data indicated a need for an adjustment.

"Given the fact it was aluminum intensive, and prior aluminum vehicles indicated collision claim severities increased, there was concern the same would occur with the F-150," Matt Moore, senior vice president of the Highway Loss Data Institute, told Automotive News. "Simply put, when we look at the overall losses relative to the other pickup trucks, there's not a change, which was not consistent with expectations."

A spokeswoman for State Farm said that insurance prices for the aluminum pickup are roughly in line with those of the previous model.

Ford officials said that, from the earliest meetings around the F-150's aluminum-heavy redesign, they focused on engineering it to be as repair-friendly as possible with a new, modular architecture.

The front apron tubes, for example, were pulled out farther for easier access. Repairing them on the previous-generation F-150 involved a time-consuming teardown of the vehicle's A-pillar and removal of the instrument panel.

The Highway Loss Data Institute also cited changes to the front fenders that cut replacement time by six or seven hours.

Gerry Bonanni, a Ford senior engineer for paint and body repair, said the automaker made those changes based on frustrating experiences with the steel pickup.

"The key thing was that we had the involvement from the early engineering meetings," he said. "The designers were able to engineer it around those specific points."

Johnson noted that meetings on the modular design started as much as two years before the F-150's debut.

"You can't overstate the value of having the truck engineered upfront in a way [that] it's less susceptible to damage," he said.

Ford also has priced replacement parts for the aluminum pickup lower.

The Highway Loss Data Institute found that total parts costs for the 2015-16 aluminum F-150s are 16 percent less than those for the 2014 steel pickups.

That includes a 43 percent drop for hoods and taillights and a 37 percent decrease for front bumpers. Rear bumpers and bedside replacement parts cost more, though.

Ford officials declined to comment on the parts pricing, although Johnson noted that Ford worked with suppliers for adhesives, cleaners, paint and other materials to help keep costs competitive.

The Highway Loss Data Institute noted, for example, that bumpers on the new pickup use chrome and do not require painting as those on the steel versions do, which saves roughly $150.

The aluminum F-150 rollout also included extensive training and education for dealers and insurers.

Ford offered its retail network a voluntary Collision Repair Program to train service shop technicians how to work with the material.

Dealers were responsible for buying new equipment that cost between $30,000 and $50,000, although they could get rebates from Ford worth roughly $10,000. Equipment included a rubberized curtain to separate aluminum repairs from work on steel vehicles because aluminum dust can ignite and explode if cross-contaminated with steel dust.

"That was critical; we knew we were asking dealers to do something big with us," Johnson said. "We knew we needed to have coverage across the country."

As part of that dealer training, Ford brought in insurance adjusters to familiarize them with changes to the vehicle. Bonanni said the company has trained nearly 6,000 adjusters to date.

Doug North, president of North Brothers Ford in Westland, Mich., was among the dealers who invested in the new equipment and training.

He said it was worth it.

"We're glad we did it," he said. "Our F-series sales and local market sales of F series have steadily grown in the last few years. Given the decline in car sales, it also represents a larger percentage of our business. We haven't had any real hiccups."