They had to replace a rear shock on our Flex from inside.  Crazy!

California says "Hold my Beer".....

That's a fair point.   So I guess you'd have to remove all connected bodywork and interior components to have access to the giga/mega cast part, but depending on the accident severity you may have to do that already with the regular repairs.     ----   Indirectly related, I remember years ago in my Flex, the windshield reservoir squirter motor died and rather than take it to the dealer to replace it, where I'm sure they'd have charged a fortune to do it, I decided to do it myself since the part was like $15 or something like that.   Well, anyway, it was on the passenger side in front of the front wheel.  But to get to it, I had to either somehow take the wheel well covering off (which still wouldn't guarantee enough room to maneuver), or pull the whole front bumper off.  I decided to do the latter, and broke a mounting clip in the process (old brittle plastic), so I had to get a replacement for that on top of the motor, and it went smoothly after that.   The point of that story is that it's crazy how many things you have to disassemble for even just a simple repair like that.  I can't even imagine having to deal with repairing a damaged vehicle.

I was just about to say that

Labor cost is the real savings as it is outrageously expensive.  I would imagine swapping out a giga (or mega) casting is pretty quick compared to R&R of 100 or so parts, torquing down each one appropriately, making sure alignment is within spec, etc.

Well, that might squash the Valencia Bronco Sport import rumor.....though, it technically only talks about the current models being build in Hermosillo.

I thought I had heard it was more expensive to repair.   So basically this sounds like they'd replace the entire front or rear gigacasting when damage is found?  The article mentioned at 15.5 mph they're basically replacing the whole thing?  If I read it correctly, anyway....   An in-depth look at the testing shows that in low-severity testing at 15 km/h (9.3 mph), the mega cast exceeded expectations by sustaining no structural damage, allowing complete vehicle repair without any work required on the mega cast component itself. Medium-severity testing at 25 km/h (15.5 mph) necessitated full mega cast replacement owing to crack propagation and structural misalignment. However, at £716 ($969) for the replacement of the whole component, the total repair cost remained competitive with, and often below, traditional repair methods for equivalent damage.

One of my theories was that the low cost pickup will just be a Bronco Sport Trac - Bronco Sport with a bed.  It'd have a fair amount of overlap with the current Maverick, though.

I'm not sure I'm understanding the problem.....   1) It's clearly not a drastically different look, and will still fall within the family look. 2) we should be happy they're keeping product fresh unlike what they've done in the past of leaving products to rot on the vine (I think this has to do with us being produced in China, which has received more consistent and thorough refreshes/redesigns

The Thatcham Research analysis Biker16 mentioned said this about megacastings impact on crash repair costs:   Comparative analysis revealed that the Model Y's mega cast construction delivered consistent cost advantages across multiple scenarios. Partial replacements cost £2,167 less than the Model 3's traditional multi-part steel rear sub-assembly construction, while full replacements saved £519. Similar patterns emerged when comparing against other manufacturers' vehicles, with the Model Y demonstrating lower repair costs than other models, including the Mercedes EQE, Hyundai IONIQ 5, and several internal combustion engine vehicles.   Since gigacastings are 1000 times better than megacastings as akirby said, you can then do the math. 😄