[quote}
And why do you say its not stiffer, it takes a significantly
greater force to bend it on a bender over the
mild steel?

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Excellent question. Chassis stiffness is a lot different then impact stiffness. During chassis stiffness, the cars chassis/cage don't bend far enough to take a permanent bent shape. The metal is still in it's elastic state, and returns to it's original shape after it's loaded. But a CM car as outlined above uses thinner material, so it automatically looses stiffness. The metal itself if they were both the same thickness would bend elastically in the exact same way.

The advantage to your point of CM, in an extreame case like a crash, the bars often bend past their elastic point. This is where CM is material superior. But like I mentioned above, the wall thickness pretty much negates the material property benifits. But to your point when greatly bending CM (like bending a roll cage), you can feel that extra effort to bend the CM. Specific material has a lot to do with it though. I know my DOM mild steel was an absolute pain in the a... to bend, more so then the CM that I've done...

So with MS you get a heavy rigid chassis when compaired to a CM lighter more flimsy chassis...