Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
The stock original Insight has a Cd of 0.25 and the frontal area is 20.0 sq ft, so the CdA is 5.0 sq ft.
If you do a full aero drag treatment (bellypan, boattail, mirror delete, front wheel skirts, smooth flat wheels, grill block) and drop the Cd to 0.17, then the CdA would be 3.4 sq ft - which is a 32% improvement!
To do the same thing by deleting the roof etc., you would have to reduce the 20 sq ft frontal area down to 13.6 sq ft - which is very hard to do. The HUGE assumption is that the Cd would remain 0.25 - and I don't think it would. Doing this would completely rejigger the air flow.
What good is a car that doesn't have a roof?
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I meant to say then redesign the roof, glass and bodywork around the minimal frontal area.
As you said, "drop the Cd to 0.17, then the CdA would be 3.4 sq ft - which is a 32% improvement." There's no way to reasonably improve beyond a 0.17cd on a conventional car. But, if you half the frontal area (if that is at all physically possible) by removing all interior space (econoboxing the heck out of it) and retain the 0.17cd streamlining your CdA is now 1.7 sq ft which is a (64%) improvement???
It makes you see the potential of motorcycles!