Quote:
Originally Posted by winkosmosis
Also, I think the aerofoil shape is misapplied to cars. The reason a wing has a front end that's rounded is because it has to work through a wide angle-of-attack range. A plane creates lift by tilting the wing. A sharp front edge on a wing would create vortices when the wing is angled relative to airflow. A car doesn't have to worry about this, only an average airflow vector within some yaw angle hitting it from the front (30 degrees?)
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Cars are also travelling at sub-sub-sub Mach speeds, ergo, the shape simply need not be like a plane that's Mach one, two, or three capable, to be efficient. Or, more aptly: efficient
enough.
In addition to that, not having a huge schnoz on a car that makes it efficient for straight ahead travel, but a tad inconvenient for turning corners, or parking in a standard parking lot space.
Both aspects of this are most certainly compromises. Die a little on the inside if you so choose, but people trying to sort out optimum shapes are deciding that one somewhat inconvenient extension of their car is better than two very inconvenient extensions.