A vehicle frame, also historically known as its chassis, is the main supporting structure of a motor vehicle to which all other components are attached, comparable to the skeleton of an organism.
Until the 1930s, virtually every car had a structural frame separate from its body. This construction design is known as body-on-frame. By the 1960s, unibody construction in passenger cars had become common, and the trend to unibody for passenger cars continued over the ensuing decades.Nearly all trucks, buses, and most pickups continue to use a separate frame as their chassis.