We recently reported an Edmund’s video of a new, aluminum bodied Ford 4X4 F-150 getting double sledgehammer body blows and now we bring you the bill for straightening the beer can bodywork. Will this give Chevrolet and Dodge showroom ammunition or will Ford’s risky bet on aluminum pay off?

The answer is it costs roughly four times as much in labor and twice as much time to fix aluminum as opposed to steel. The aluminum truck needed 20 hours of labor at $120 an hour ($2,400 total labor) and seven-10 days in the shop. Old school sheet metal requires 10 hours at $60 an hour ($600 total labor) and only four days in the shop.

Throw in a replacement taillight at $887 (with LED lighting and blind spot detection) and various other repairs, and the total came out to over $4,100 for the aluminum bodied truck – $1,800 more than regular old steel. What this will do to insurance rates for the new Fords remains to be seen, but the extra repair money has to come from somewhere. The takeaway from all this is it takes more time, unique tools, and specialized training to fix aluminum body panels and costs more money than repairing steel.

With gas prices hovering around $2 a gallon, introducing aluminum trucks that are tricky to fix with turbo V6s may prove to be unfortunate timing for the Blue Oval. However, if gas goes back up to over $4 a gallon, Ford might have the last laugh, but we will have to wait and see!

Either way, we think the new F-150 is cool and an awesome showcase for North American Ford engineering expertise. Ford has its own video too, showing pro athletes bouncing golf balls and baseballs off the truck bed to demonstrate that the aluminum F-150 is 30-percent more damage resistant than the old model.

Having said all that, you can bet these two sledgehammer shots heard ‘round the truck industry have found their way to Chevy and FCA execs ears by now.