Originally Posted by Vman455
I really think you've put yourself at a disadvantage working from such an old copy of the book. I have the 4th edition (1998), which isn't even the newest but is the last edition edited by Hucho.
On p. 53, under the heading 1.4 Aerodynamics and Design, Hucho writes:
You can go ahead and think that car design is all some sort of conspiracy, and that aerodynamicists have no say or are blinded somehow by corporate culture into producing shapes that have much higher drag than the lowest-drag experimental models or concept cars. But the reality is they work under constraints: people, who are motivated by cultural norms, buy cars; people buy cars for practical reasons and emotional ones; exterior design is dictated by both stylistic considerations (4 wheels, a standard-ish dimensional footprint, proportional wheels, aggressive faces, etc.) and technical ones (crash test performance, NVH, fuel economy, handling and performance, etc.).
The reason we don't have cars that look like tadpoles is simple: hardly anyone would buy one. Why? They look "abnormal." With a long tail, they won't fit in a standard garage, and if you make them small enough to do that they end up being tiny inside. They compromise packaging, interior volume, sightlines, and practicality.
Probably the best example of this so far is the original Honda Insight. That car is as close to a no-compromise car as have ever been brought to market. It had low drag and low weight. Consequently, it was a sales flop. People didn't want a two-seat car that didn't have an insane amount of power. People didn't want to pay extra for an all-aluminum body. People didn't want a tiny car with wheel skirts that looked different than every other car at their local Honda dealership.
It's stupid, yes, and buyers consistently buy impractical cars with feeble justifications--but this is not because of some conspiracy preventing their rational behavior. It's because we're irrational already.
We're seeing this start to change, as low-drag design becomes a premium feature, with cars like the Model S and 3, Taycan, and now S-class returning lower drag coefficients without significant changes to exterior design features. It remains to be seen how much lower they can go.
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