The body panels actually play a pretty important part in crash protection. they are designed to absorb or dissipate energy so less is trasferred to the cab structure and in turn less to the occupant. But again, there is nothing keeping an aluminum panel from being designed to do the same thing just as well. In a frontal impact for example, the hood is designed to fold in a controlled way so that it doesn't act like a guillotine and chop the drivers head off. A truck body welded together from 1/2 inch thick steel plate would probably get damaged less in a crash but it would be a lot more likely to kill the driver since he'd take all the force of that solid structure decelerating from 60 mph to zero in a a hundredth of a second instead of a half a second.

Think about a formula 1 car. When they hit a wall they crush and shed body panels by design...they don't bounce off the wall undamaged.

 

Good points, but the point I was making is that the strength of the body panel isn't what is protecting you.

Cars from 40 years ago had much thicker, heavier body panels, but they weren't safer. The design going into the way the structure underneath the body is 1000x more important than the body panels for occupant protection. Since body panels are already thin and flimsy, it doesn't take much energy to fold them up, so the energy absorption is designed into the structure underneath.

 

Curious as to what took them so long. When I was still working for Ford back in the mid 90's we had two or three different vehicles that would come into our plant from time to time. One was a Tauras, and the other two were Sables, although none wore any badging. F-150 hoods, Mustang deck lids, and several other components have been aluminum for several years.

 

My 01 stang has alot of Al sheet metal, Ford is gonna do this right. They learned alot after the Pinto. I have faith in them. I got a good chuckle about the Ram section though lol!