The unibody design, while still bad, actually seems to be a bit of a red herring in this case. The article describes that the actual cause for disassembling the entire vehicle was that they had to replace the tailgate, and had to repaint the body to match the new tailgate. Painting the body basically required disassembling the entire truck (which is also ridiculous).
For the painting though, even in "simpler" cars, vehicle painting is ridiculously overpriced and complex, IMO. I've been quoted nearly $2000 to fix a dent the size of a nickel on my basic 10 year old car because the body shop said they'd have to repaint the entire door, then repaint all of the panels adjacent to the door to blend it in. In other words, fixing a dent the size of a nickel somehow requires repainting an area thousands of times larger. It's ridiculous. There must be a better way.
For the painting though, even in "simpler" cars, vehicle painting is ridiculously overpriced and complex, IMO. I've been quoted nearly $2000 to fix a dent the size of a nickel on my basic 10 year old car because the body shop said they'd have to repaint the entire door, then repaint all of the panels adjacent to the door to blend it in. In other words, fixing a dent the size of a nickel somehow requires repainting an area thousands of times larger. It's ridiculous. There must be a better way.