Dodge to offer 41 MPG (hwy) "Aero" version of 2013 Dart - 0.285 drag coefficient

[NeilBlanchard]

Really -- I would have thought that smaller has lower Cd and lower area, too? A larger car has a larger wake which mean higher drag, all else being equal.

Since the Cd is already under 0.3, that means the area would have to be reduced 3X more than if you reduce the Cd.

Let's say a typical car has 30 square feet of frontal area and it has a Cd of 0.33, so CdA is 9.9sq ft.

If you reduce the Cd down to 0.30 that reduces the CdA to 9.0sq ft. To match that by reducing the frontal area, you have to take away 2.5sq ft for a total of 27.5sq ft.

If you reduce the Cd down to 0.27 that makes the CdA 8.1sq ft, and to match that you'd have to reduce the frontal area down to 24.5sq ft -- that means truncating about 1 foot off the height, which greatly reduces the interior volume of the car.

So you get a much smaller car. Reducing the Cd can be done without compromising the interior volume.

[mwebb]

before you get all goo goo eyed over this junk
remember

there is a reason they stopped selling alpha romeo in USA many moons ago
they were junk
they broke often
they were expensive to fix , the fix never took
parts were un available at any price
they did not last
they did not hold resale value
they rusted apart
they were junk

41 mpg ? ooh aah , barf .

[F8L]

17" wheels? Seriously? They are giving up 3+mpg right there. In fact, they are giving up 6+mpg vs. something like a 15" Energy Saver A/S tire? I've done the testing and it sucks. lol.

[jason1973tl]

How about I make this a little worse. My 86 Trans Am had a cd of .29 also. The second gen Intrepids have a cd of .30. Why do cars seem to be getting worse aerodynamically. The most recent F Bodies are less aerodynamic and the new Charger is not as aero as the Intrepid either.

I am sure there are other examples but there shouldn't be any examples should there?

[jime57]

Originally Posted by aerohead

If they keep at it,they'll catch up to 1935!

Or a 12 year old Honda Insight

It has taken them how long to discover grill blocks

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by jimepting

Or a 12 year old Honda Insight

It has taken them how long to discover grill blocks

yeah,and it's hard to know how far back it goes.
Many years ago an uncle treated my oldest brother and I to a visit to the air museum at Chino Airport,California (flying cars).
They have a WW-II Soviet YAK fighter,with an active rotating-radial vanes within radial vanes style grille-blocked radial engine.Really elegant engineering.
I was serving at Eddy's Airplane Patch at the time,and immediately flashed to the air-operated shutters on our Brockway bob-tail tractor-trailer radiator.
As Alex Tremulis would say,"what's old is new again!"

[gone-ot]

Originally Posted by aerohead

yeah,and it's hard to know how far back it goes.
Many years ago an uncle treated my oldest brother and I to a visit to the air museum at Chino Airport,California (flying cars).
They have a WW-II Soviet YAK fighter,with an active rotating-radial vanes within radial vanes style grille-blocked radial engine.Really elegant engineering.
I was serving at Eddy's Airplane Patch at the time,and immediately flashed to the air-operated shutters on our Brockway bob-tail tractor-trailer radiator.
As Alex Tremulis would say,"what's old is new again!"

...or, my reverse-analogy: "...memories are short..."