Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
That's something I wonder about. There are two rather contradictory factors at work (at least to design a car to my taste): you want a rather wide front stance for stability, but a narrower passenger compartment. So is it aerodynamically better to have the wheels within a wide front bodywork (like modern cars) then taper rearwards, or have them in outboard wheel pants, like Aptera?
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Biplanes loose about 10% to interference between the wings, which are far better separated than most front wheel pods. One has to forget about designing 3 nice streamlined shapes, and treat the space between the wheels and the body as a duct, with obstructions. An unstreamlined brake line or ball joint may look insignificant, but the relatively high cd means that it has a thick, slow wake of air that the main flow has to go around. When you are done with all that detailing, there may be a slight gain from the reduction in visible frontal area. Directional stability is likely to go down, though, as if some feathers were added to the front of an arrow.