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Old 06-20-2010, 06:25 PM   #17 (permalink)
Patrick
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Hot Tamale - '10 Toyota Prius III
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lunarhighway View Post
than again, if you have a windtunnel it seems that it's rather easy to build such a grille so perhaps a lot of "grilles" especially these new slender ones like on lets say cars like the prius to name one, act like that.
I'm not sure how well that would work on the current Prius. The majority of the opening is in the front bumper, which is on a vertical plane. It looks to me like Ford's design is dependent on the airflow up and over the hood for it to work properly.

Also, I wonder how much drag Ford's design is adding over some other possible opening. The "angles" are similar to small parachutes, which is about the worst possible profile for low drag. I'd like to see a Cd comparison between the Ford design and, say, a plain opening with the same area as the "slots" and the "angle" area just a smooth curve into the hoodline.
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