This paper presents the benefits of using structural adhesives for metal bonding. Structural adhesives offer the possibility of improved performance of metal structures by contributing to improved stiffness or crash worthiness of a metal structure formed by conventional joining techniques such as spot welding or riveting. Structural adhesives also open the possibilities of joining dissimilar substrates and reducing weight on existing conventional structures. This paper will present the improvement in the crash worthiness of a box beam body structure that can be obtained when structural adhesives are used in addition to spot welds or as the sole joining method. The performance of highly toughened adhesives and their contribution to enhancement of energy absorbing capability of standard box beam test samples will also be described. In summary, the average deflection forces to crush the box beams in welded-only, weldbonded, and bonded-only configurations are plotted. In the case of cold rolled steel beams, the average deflection force increased by 27% when moving from a welded-only to a weld-bonded configurations and with half the number of spot-welds. In the case of HDG (hot dipped galvanized) beams, the weldbonded beams showed an increase in the deflection force by almost 20%. Reduction of spot welds by 50% did not have any negative effect on the deflection force. Elimination of spot-welds however, showed a further increase of 5% when compared to the weldbonded configurations and almost 25% when compared to welded-only configurations. This further increase in force for the bonded-only beams can be attributed to the elimination of all weak spots around the spot weld areas where the adhesives may be degraded due to heat. These trends clearly establish the effectiveness of impact toughened structural adhesives in increasing the energy absorption capability of a model box beam structure. Alternatively use of adhesives allows for down gauging of structures while maintaining their performance leading to lighter weight designs. The dynamic box beam crush tests establish the effectiveness of toughened, impact resistant structural adhesives to significantly enhance performance of conventionally designed structures in an economical way.