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The probe in one of my favorite shapes and if I was going to start with a rolling shell it would be one of those...but then theres plain old steel and heavy everything....nah.
Take a 1st generation Mazda Rx7 for example. The bullet shape of the front end was pretty decent, but the rear fastback of the car got loose at high speed...I raced one for several years both autocross and road racing and found that I had to change setups because the higher speeds got the rear end loose and low speeds understeer'd...
My goal I am trying to achieve is to reduce frontal area and therefore gain a few % on the designs already out there. Take the Avion for instance, look at it's front view and then take a big bite out of the bottom center of it....
Slowly tapering this channel smaller and shallower towards the back(and so it doesn't totally kill the passenger space), should yield a lower CD and help balance the effect of lift on the back of the car due to it's shape(fastback type shape). In the beginning I was hesitant about even posting because I am unsure if this can be answered without wind tunnel testing or computer testing of the shape itself.
FYI in high school I based my co2 dragster design on a similar concept and made basically a bullet shape at the cylinder with a pair of vertical triangles that picked up the axles. Frontal area was as little as it could be, and despite that I had doubled the side surface area by hogging out the center, it was the fastest by over 5mph of all the ones tested.
A couple of wood 1/12 scale models and a visit to my friend at the VRI program may be in my future..
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