Section design of vehicle structure has been developed by two methods. One is the section property method which uses section property as a design variable. This method shows the tendency of an optimum section approximately. The other method is the section shape method which utilizes geometric parameter of section as a design variable. Practical solutions are obtained by this method. However, it is very expensive for large-scale problems due to the large number of geometric parameters. These two methods are compared through several sample problems. The finite element method is used for the structural and sensitivity analyses. The results are analyzed based on the number of function evaluations, the quality of cost function, the complexity of programing, and etc. The applications of both methods are also discussed.