When did Ford first experiment with aluminum? What exactly is the alloy composition? How is the manufacturing process different with aluminum?

If you’ve wondered about questions like this, Car & Driver has a treat for you. They recently posted an in-depth piece to their blog highlighting many detailed facts regarding the Ford F-150 and all things aluminum. From Car & Driver:

Henry Ford’s Model T was the 20th century’s boldest automotive stroke. Like Lotus’s Colin Chapman and every other shrewd motorsports engineer, Ford—even way back when—identified weight as the enemy. Model T frames were made of steel containing vanadium for extra strength, and millions of T hoods were aluminum long before that metal entered the car-material mainstream. With only 20 horsepower under the hood, the T needed its weight to be kept below 2000 pounds to meet Ford’s ambitious performance goals. Now that 2015 Ford F-150s are finally in customer hands, inquiring minds wonder why it took a century for aluminum to leap from Model T hoods to the cabs and beds of America’s bestselling vehicle. Let’s explore that topic, shall we?

Car & Driver’s blog post is a thorough examination about the use of aluminum, from design to manufacturing to intended results. See the full piece at the Car & Driver blog.

Ford is getting ready to push the 2015 F-150 into the public’s arms. Initial models have started to trickle into dealerships, but early 2015 will see a larger-scale launch. To support this, one of the company’s biggest manufacturing plants has begun ramping up. From the Kansas City Star:

It’s been nearly a year since the 2015 F-150 made a splash with its aluminum body at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

Now the time has come to get the new models into dealer showrooms. A trickle of them have started to be delivered from a Michigan plant which is ramping up, and early next year the company’s Claycomo plant will begin production.

Area Ford dealers have been fielding customer inquiries about the newest version of the F-150, which for decades has been the most popular vehicle in the U.S.

“We’re anxious and excited to get one,” said Mark Smith, president of Dick Smith Ford in Raytown, who hopes to have one or two of the 2015 F-150s by Christmas.

The launch of a revamped popular model is typically a big deal, and this time even more so. The pickup truck will have an aluminum body which is getting lots of attention since it’s a first for a mainstream vehicle.

Ford says it is ready. The truck has gone through 10 million miles of durability tests, and the military-grade aluminum is ding resistant, in keeping with the truck’s reputation for toughness. The company got some bragging rights last week when the 2015 F-150 with a 2.7 liter V-6 Ecoboost engine got a fuel economy rating that’s the best of any full-sized gasoline-powered pickup.

With the F-150 about to hit large-scale production, the next chapter in the story will be how the aluminum trickle-down effect impacts other models and manufacturers. Stay tuned, things will get really interesting once auto manufacturers see how the public reacts to the new F-150.

It’s funny how solving one mystery often unlocks another. In this case, resolving one twenty-year mystery can be the key to another internationally known, decades-long mystery. At the center of it all? One piece of aluminum — more specifically, a piece of aluminum recovered in a remote island nearly two decades ago. From The International Group For Historic Aircraft Recovery:

Increasing confidence that a piece of aluminum aircraft debris found on a remote, uninhabited South Pacific atoll came from Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra has bolstered speculation that a sonar anomaly detected at a depth of 600 feet off the west end of the island is the lost aircraft.

In June 2015, TIGHAR will return to Nikumaroro to investigate the anomaly with Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) technology supported by Nai’a, the 120-foot Fiji-based vessel that has served five previous TIGHAR explorations. During the twenty-four day expedition, divers will search for other wreckage at shallower depths and an onshore search team will seek to identify objects detected in historical photographs that may be relics of an initial survival camp.

During Amelia Earhart’s stay in Miami at the beginning of her second world flight attempt, a custom-made, special window on her Lockheed Electra aircraft was removed and replaced with an aluminum patch. The patch was an expedient field modification. Its dimensions, proportions, and pattern of rivets were dictated by the hole to be covered and the structure of the aircraft. The patch was as unique to her particular aircraft as a fingerprint is to an individual. Research has now shown that a section of aircraft aluminum TIGHAR found on Nikumaroro in 1991 matches that fingerprint in many respects. For a detailed study of this important new development see The Window, The Patch, and The Artifact, Research Bulletin #73 on the TIGHAR website.

The strong possibility that Artifact 2-2-V-1 is the “Miami Patch” means that the many fractures, tears, dents and gouges evident on the metal may be important clues to the fate – and resting place – of the aircraft itself. Deciphering those clues will be the next phase in TIGHAR’s analysis of this complex and fascinating artifact.

To learn more about this potentially historic find, visit the official TIGHAR website for the complete press release.

2014 will see the launch of the Ford F-150. Fast-forward two years and another famous rugged vehicle will begin hitting the streets with an aluminum body. It’s time to welcome the Jeep Wrangler to the aluminum family. From AutoNews:

The next-generation Jeep Wrangler will feature an aluminum body to save weight, and will remain a body-on-frame vehicle, sources say.

Because Chrysler won’t make the switch to unibody construction, Wrangler assembly will probably stay in Toledo. And that means the company will likely produce more Wranglers for U.S. dealers and for export.

The Wrangler tale started in early October in Paris when Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, was asked about two of his previous promises — never to build Wranglers outside Toledo and no more brick-and-mortar factories in North America.

In his response, Marchionne chose his words carefully. He said that the next Wrangler needed to lose weight and that doing so with aluminum might mean the Wrangler had to move elsewhere because of excessive costs to re-equip the Toledo plant for aluminum assembly.

He pointed out that Chrysler had excess capacity in at least two of its existing plants. But the two plants he named currently build only unibody vehicles, which can’t be built on the same line as body-on-frame vehicles.

As Jeeps are built and configured differently than trucks, we’ll surely be getting more details in the next year about how aluminum is incorporated into both the design and manufacturing of the vehicle. Stay tuned.

We’ve seen how the American car market has pushed toward aluminum with Ford and Tesla leading the way. European car makers have also made notable progress in this realm. Now, a market we don’t usually talk about has made some noise on this matter. Enter China and their commitment to aluminum-based electric vehicles as a means to address both transportation and environmental concerns. From Bloomberg:

China’s drive to build electric cars is likely to set up a greater-than-forecast surge in demand for aluminum, according to Novelis Inc., the world’s biggest supplier to automakers of sheets made of the light metal.

China, the world’s biggest carbon emitter, is mandating that at least 30 percent of new government vehicles be powered by alternative energy by 2016 in the government’s latest salvo to combat pollution and reduce energy dependence.

The use of aluminum in auto bodies by China, Japan and South Korea, Asia’s major carmaking countries, is around 50,000 metric tons and expected to grow at about 30 percent a year for at least the next decade, Shashi Maudgal, president of Novelis Asia, said in an interview in Changzhou.

We’ve seen aluminum become more than a trend with US automakers, but it looks like the rest of the world is following.