Quote:
Originally Posted by shovel
naturally the men and women who design today's cars aren't clowns.... if smooth hubcaps (or wheels) would offer a 5mpg improvement on the same car, that's how they'd sell 'em by default because that would be an easy way to meet federal standards & sell more cars (that's the business they're in, after all)
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Very few mods offer large % efficiency increases. To dismiss smooth wheels/covers because they're only worth a few percent improvement means by extension you must go down the entire list of potential mods dismissing one after the next for the exact same reason.
There is no magic bullet - there is only magic buckshot.
(Well, there actually
are a few magic bullets, but most people won't go for them for reasons of complexity, practicality or aesthetics.)
Vehicle designers routinely leave an enormous amount of inefficiency in vehicle design because they're bound by a relatively narrow view of "consumer acceptability" in both aesthetics & (ever rising bar for) performance. If efficient design sold vehicles, our fleet would look radically different than it does today. The fact is, most people think efficient design looks weird, and they wouldn't buy it vs. what is typically marketed to the sheeple as sexy.
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There's a PT Cruiser in my town with smooth stainless or aluminum aftermarket wheel discs. I think they look fantastic on the car. They're fairly expensive, though, so probably won't pay for themselves in fuel savings. So you would need to be more creative than that - search the forum for ideas others have used to make DIY covers (e.g. coroplast, other thin plastics, fiberglass).