Inaleria/Rondeau GTP chassis construction(and other vehicles) questions.

From what I read(mostly here), the Rondeau family of mid/late 70s and early 80s Group 6 GTP cars used a steel tube space frame chassis that was basically almost encased(at least in areas) by aluminum sheeting, making the chassis almost like a monocoque. Would it be fair to simply call the car a hybrid of both pricipals?

Also, would it be fair to classify the Ferrari 312T F1 car family as such, as they used a similar constuction(though most sources say the cars used a monocoque chassis). And also equally confusing, depending on sources, the Chevrolet Corvette(both road and racing cars) have been described had having a tube fram chassis, but the fiberglass body is mounted to the chassis in such a way that it is(to some degree) load bearing, thus possibly becoming a semi-monocoque chassis. And the Audi A8 and R8's chassis are dubbed by Audi to be space frames, but(in particular the A8), the body panels are bonded to the platfrom and become load bearing/stressed.

So where does each vehicle fall in place at-space frame/tube frame, monocoque/unitary, or hybrids?

[QUOTE=Chernaudi;833052]From what I read(mostly here), the Rondeau family of mid/late 70s and early 80s Group 6 GTP cars used a steel tube space frame chassis that was basically almost encased(at least in areas) by aluminum sheeting, making the chassis almost like a monocoque. Would it be fair to simply call the car a hybrid of both pricipals?

Also, would it be fair to classify the Ferrari 312T F1 car family as such, as they used a similar constuction(though most sources say the cars used a monocoque chassis). And also equally confusing, depending on sources, the Chevrolet Corvette(both road and racing cars) have been described had having a tube fram chassis, but the fiberglass body is mounted to the chassis in such a way that it is(to some degree) load bearing, thus possibly becoming a semi-monocoque chassis. And the Audi A8 and R8's chassis are dubbed by Audi to be space frames, but(in particular the A8), the body panels are bonded to the platfrom and become load bearing/stressed.

So where does each vehicle fall in place at-space frame/tube frame, monocoque/unitary, or hybrids?[/QUOTE]

This is commonly referred to as a semi-monocoque. Ferrari used this for quite a few of their racing cars like the 312 P that is featured on the main page right now. The 312 T you mention is actually the first they built that used a real monocoque. They did race a monocoque 312 B3, but those tubs were built in England.

The modern interpretation of the term 'spaceframe' is a bit weird. For me a spaceframe is constructed from a series of small diameter tubes like the legendary 'Birdcage' Maseratis. However for a lack of a better word, a spaceframe is what the new chassis could be called, even though they are constructed from aluminum sections that bare no resemblance to small diameter tubes at all.