What are the car manufacturers doing??

[elhigh]

Snap on wheel skirts is a crazy-smart idea. It used to be you could find wheel skirts to fit about half of the cars on the road. JC Whitless carried them, some could even be found in parts stores. Now, nothing. Well, JCW still has a few, but only for big pickups and old classic cars.

[metromizer]

Originally Posted by elhigh

Snap on wheel skirts is a crazy-smart idea. It used to be you could find wheel skirts to fit about half of the cars on the road. JC Whitless carried them

Outside of Bonneville land speed record cars, they used to be a fashion statement. One of the guys I used to race with, always looking for a performance advantage, installed skirts on both front and rear of his mid-9 second 140mph VW Pro Stocker about 8 years ago... the sactioning body had to deal with protests from the other racers, so they were dis-allowed after that. According to the team, they didn't make a noticable difference in performance, but then again run-to-run ET's on those cars aren't exactly repeatable or science, they only tried them in qualifying.

I'd buy a set for my metro in a minute.

IMO JCW would offer them if two conditions existed:

A) There was a demand
B) They were approached by a vendor with sufficient manafacturing capacity to supply thousands of units per month for a wide range of compact cars.

I think the demand is there, or maybe it's just geeks like us guys on ecomodder that would would buy them

[RH77]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

A Cd of 1.9 is terrible, and a Cd of 0.19 is outstanding.

Likely a simple typo or misunderstanding of the decimal.

The Honda Insight has a Cd of 0.25

The Toyota Prius has a Cd of 0.26

I have to put in a pitch for the first generation Acura TSX.

Cd = 0.27

Luckily it has a 2.4L 4-cylinder instead of a 6, but makes 200 hp at a high compression ratio and with an automatic transmission. This is my Wife's daily driver -- we changed over to regular unleaded instead of premium and found no difference in FE or the performance for which we use it. Operating expenses are pretty low so far with the changeover.

I had a chance to drive it this past week. I managed 37.1 MPG over 189 miles (vehicle-best so far). If I had it longer and more chances to take the highway, 40 would be very easy to attain on a regular basis. I'm not sure about the 2009's Cd, but if it's close, I certainly hope they offer a Diesel as rumored. It would work great with a 1.8L or so, but it would detract from the "performance" aspect of the brand. Too bad Honda can't offer it with such options here.

IMO, it's a normal-looking car with a very good (comparable) Cd. Where are the other manufacturers? A quick inspection of standard items: partial front undertray, 4 spats, lip spoiler, partial rear diffuser, relatively clean undercar flow pans (exhaust system is the biggest drawback -- dual mufflers) ...

It definitely is a good learning tool for comparison of the older Integra and possible aero tweaks from the manufacturer's modern point of view.

RH77