Quote:
Originally Posted by 93hatchDX
Speaking of kit cars, is there a kit car out there with low-CD/High FE in mind?
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No not in my perspective. But this opinion will vary depending on what you think is low cd and high fuel economy. Another point is what you consider a kit car to be. For me I would consider a kit car a vehicle you purchase all the components for ie. Body kit, doors, glass, engine, suspension, chassis etc than bolt it together with little fabrication involved. You will not find this in a low CD high fuel economy car. What you will find is a lot of do it yourself plans on how to build the specific car such as the RQ Riley XR3. There is much fabrication involved as well as constructing your own fiberglass composite body shells! RQ Riley has been talking for years now that he is considering taking molds and offering body kits. This has not happened yet and probably won't ever!
All of his other plans books are outdated and no where near the detail of the XR3 plans which are very well done I must say. I can say this cuz I have them all literally! I can also say that his Urba Centurion plans is where I got the idea to start building my diesel electric kitcar TIGON. I use the same Triumph Spitfire/GT6 chassis as the Urba Centurion but that is pretty much all that it will have in common by the time its all completed.
Low coefficient of drag I would consider is under .2. The closest production car that you can get to this number is the Honda Insight Gen 1. The problem with this is legally you can not take out the engine and replace it with something else. However there are people who have done engine swaps and even put a VW Lupo 1.2L TDI in it. There fuel economy was over 100mpg I believe. Anytime you majorly alter a post OBD engine car such as with an engine swap you are risking fines or worse.
Fuel economy I would consider high is above 100mpg. While freebeard pointed out a cool vehicle I would consider a true kitcar in the Smythe TDI its cd is nothing spectacular nor is the fuel economy. You will not get over 100mpg in that tdi kitcar. It is cool to look at though and he did a good job on it.
So again to answer your question in my opinion no there really is not a kitcar out there that has good CD and high fuel economy in mind. If there was most likely I would not be designing and building my own cuz it takes tons of time and tons of money LOL
GH.