As I previously alluded to, I think the misinterpretation of this article is the root of all this nonsense:
Automotive Aerodynamics - Sport Compact Car Magazine
and this is probably the passage that traumatized poor Squirmie so:
Quote:
The result is lift, a curse to almost all production cars. For example, the 1995 BMW M3 has a lift coefficient (CL) of about .34, which means that a lifting force of approximately 500 pounds is generated by the body at 100 mph.
|
... which seems like an error of some sort to me because no other similar cars for which I've looked at the data are anywhere near close to that.
Were I to run the equation again with the BMW M3 l x w the lift numbers would be even smaller because the car is somewhat smaller.
I bet it was supposed to say 50 lbs.