How the body is built, and why it matters
An Aceca's shape is held by three materials working together. Underneath is John Tojeiro's chassis — a large-diameter tubular-steel ladder frame. Over it sits a composite body frame: a superstructure of welded steel tubing with ash timber worked into the closed coupé's structure. Over that are hand-formed aluminium panels, wheeled and fitted individually so that no two cars are quite the same. It is coachbuilding in the old sense — beautiful, light, and, when it goes wrong, the work of specialists rather than a bodyshop. Because three dissimilar materials are involved, condition is not one question but three.
For the full construction story, see how the Aceca was made.
The two ways an Aceca body decays
Where to look
Because the failure points follow the construction, you can inspect methodically. Start at the low points where water collects: the sills, the floor edges, the bottoms of the doors, and the base of the screen and tailgate apertures. Look along every panel edge and seam, and around every visible steel fixing in an alloy panel, for blistering or white powder. Probe the ash frame anywhere it can be reached — soft, damp or spongy timber is a structural finding, not a cosmetic one. And examine the chassis and frame tubing at its lowest points and anywhere mud collects, tapping and probing rather than trusting fresh paint. Treat bubbling paint as galvanic corrosion until proven otherwise, and treat any soft timber as a reason to walk away or to price a coachwork rebuild.
For the full walk-round, see the pre-purchase inspection guide; for cosmetic touch-in on early galvanic corrosion, see the aluminium body corrosion care how-to.
What repair really costs
None of the three materials is a bodyshop job. Aluminium panel repair is specialist English-wheel and coachbuilding work, not filler. Reframing rotten ash is cabinet-maker-grade coachbuilding. Corroded chassis or frame tubes need specialist fabrication and welding. A proper Aceca restoration is a body-off, bare-metal, nut-and-bolt affair — the way the good ones are done — and it runs into serious five-figure money and often well beyond. The hard truth for a buyer is that a cheap "runner" hiding structural decay can cost far more to put right than a sorted, documented car costs to buy in the first place.
How to buy on the body
The strategy follows from all of the above. Buy the best body you can afford, not the cheapest car. Prize a documented, recent body-off restoration and a matching-numbers car with the invoices to prove it — that history is worth paying for. Be most careful with a car that is suspiciously cheap or freshly and thinly painted; on an Aceca, a quick respray is often hiding what a proper repair would have cost. And on anything you are serious about, have it inspected by an AC or Aceca specialist who knows where these bodies fail — the fee is trivial against the cost of getting it wrong. Get the body right and the rest of the car is comparatively straightforward; get it wrong and no amount of mechanical excellence will save you.