Hi JTS,
The body is glass. The aluminum panels are installed over the top of the glass in the engine compartment and the trunk. They are not structural, but they do look good. Click on the camera icon by my name for some pics of the panels that I did in my E-M.
As far as the quality of the kit, much depends on how it was put together. Someone once called the E-M a hot rod built to look like a cobra, and as delivered from E-M I would have to agree. An example of one of the things that I "fixed" was the dash. As delivered from E-M it has a huge hole for the column with a dip extending below the bottom edge of the dash. This is not "correct" so I had to do some cutting and welding to make things as they should be. I've been building on and off for eight years now and much of this time has been spent making things more Cobra and less hotrod, with the exception of my weakness for polished aluminum......That's my one glaring consession to the hotrod look
.
Good luck!
Jon