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I've thought about this as well. You want a smooth radiator on the surface of your car. It should be fed with coolant on the radiator side of the thermostat, so it doesn't interfere with warm-up. You could add a few fins or large ridges to increase the surface area. If the fins are spaced far enough apart, and point paralell to airflow, the aerodynamic impact could be smaller than that of a grille opening.
I've thought about a coolant-to-frame and/or coolant-to-hood heat exchanger for my Insight. The hood is too thin to conduct heat across its surface, and the frame has too little area exposed to airflow. Overall, it would be cool, and I might do it, but it really wouldn't let me reduce the grille opening that much.
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