GM has given up on aero fender skirts

[mcrews]

Originally Posted by Sven7

If you design a car to have wheel skirts and leave them off, it looks funny.



If you design a car to have open wheel wells and later add skirts, it looks funny.



risk.

oh come on.....don't use a picture of the citron with a hard on!!!!!!!!
Hydralics must be stuck!!!!
A Cetrion looks much better hunkered down. When i was in hs, one of the hippie boys (73-75) had one. This was in dallas tx. never forget the day he made it go up & down for us........

and of course a skirt looks silly with some stupid name.........oh scratch that

[oil pan 4]

GMs best bet is to stick with building cars people want to buy.

When gas hits $5 a gallon cars that consumers considered butt ugly cars will be a little more appealing, but until then its going to be the same as always.

[NeilBlanchard]

Beauty is as beauty does. Hopefully I can build a car that lowers consumption to ~100Wh/mile:

Since aerodynamics are the overwhelming majority of the energy used to move the car at most speeds (~35MPH and up), the biggest savings in efficiency are in lowering drag.

[euromodder]

Does he still have the job ?
He should be out after this rubbish hit the news.

According to Welburn, there are several drawbacks:
The fender skirt causes tire pressure to increase.

Oh boy.
All Insight I owners are now running to their cars pulling off the skirts !

Removable skirts are difficult to keep in place properly, plus there’s the added cost of each skirt.

It obviously costs more than to produce nothing.
But they haven't been falling off Insights.

Pick one: To use a fender skirt, the rear tires need to be narrower to fit inside the wheel well or the vehicle track needs to be narrower or the body needs to be what he called “pulled out” to accommodate the same size tires that are steering the car.

Pick one :
- tires are oversized anyway
- slightly narrower track on the rear reduces drag
- the amount the underbody needs to be pulled out isn't an issue, as car manufacturers and the aftermarket have been doing it for decades with optional sideskirts between the wheels and plastic fender extenders for souped up adventure versions of plain cars.

Welburn said pulling the body out, essentially widening the body where the rear tires are located, increases aerodynamic drag.

Slightly, and you gain it back + a bit extra drag reduction because of the covers.
Besides, quite a few folks on here have done it without adding extra area.
If they can do it, surely a GM engineer can do it if he's worth his pay ?

Says Welburn: "The short answer is, skirts don’t help on a production car."

Those Honda guys had it all wrong then.
Same for the Citroen blokes and countless other manufacturers who have used wheel skirts in the day.


If you wonder why GM USA doesn't have efficient vehicles, you can now pin a name on it : Welburn.

We'll burn more gas

[Sven7]

^^ I think you're right. That's why new ideas don't come around; someone doesn't like them. Everyone doesn't like something, though, and you can imagine what would happen to Camaros if an ecomodder type got the job. More people like Camaros than Priuses. More attention is given to sports cars.

Originally Posted by ChrstphrR

Correction there ... it's automotive styling, not engineering. As in, marketing gurus, focus groups, planned obsolescence, consulting the legal department 137 times over, tailfins...

Marketing, Legal or Styling? They're different things. I'll say right now most stylists aren't into wheel skirts, but I can't speak for the focus groups.

Originally Posted by mcrews

oh come on.....don't use a picture of the citron with a hard on!!!!!!!!
Hydralics must be stuck!!!!
A Cetrion looks much better hunkered down. When i was in hs, one of the hippie boys (73-75) had one. This was in dallas tx. never forget the day he made it go up & down for us........

and of course a skirt looks silly with some stupid name.........oh scratch that

Sometimes it's nice to have suspension travel

My favorite use for a Citroen (or damn near any car, come to think of it).



Those cars were driven hard, and even with skilled mechanics they did not want to take off fender skirts during stages. This brings up a good point because most drivers will not want to remove skirts in the middle of the Mojave or in a snow bank in South Dakota or in South Detroit... you get the... "drift".

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

GMs best bet is to stick with building cars people want to buy.

Yeah, and stick with building what they've been building for ages.
Then wonder why they'll need to be bailed out. Again.

What happened to innovation in the US ?

We'll have those 60+ mpg cars in Europe.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by Sven7

Those cars were driven hard, and even with skilled mechanics they did not want to take off fender skirts during stages.

Those were race cars.
Normal driving and operating conditions no longer apply when racing.

This brings up a good point because most drivers will not want to remove skirts in the middle of the Mojave or in a snow bank in South Dakota or in South Detroit... you get the... "drift".

Make it a user friendly design, and it won't be an issue.

Most people won't want to remove a headlight bulb either.
I replace both of mine in under 5 minutes.
I've heard a story about a non-Volvo garage taking an hour to do just one though, claiming "The other side would be even more difficult !"
(Both sides are identical.)

[Sven7]

Originally Posted by euromodder

Those were race cars.
Normal driving and operating conditions no longer apply when racing.

The best auto technology is developed in racing. Normal driving and operating conditions are amplified in racing, especially rally, so things that work on the stages should be adaptable to "real life". It's no wonder why Subaru has had so much success in the AWD market. It's also the reason Saab became what it was in the 50's-70's. Some people in the early 70's would have said turbochargers had no place in street cars.

Make it a user friendly design, and it won't be an issue.

I agree, but you know how things tend to go.

Most people won't want to remove a headlight bulb either.
I replace both of mine in under 5 minutes.
I've heard a story about a non-Volvo garage taking an hour to do just one though, claiming "The other side would be even more difficult !"
(Both sides are identical.)

Most headlights are symmetrical but things such as batteries get in the way and restrict access I would consider the battery side more difficult. Also, headlight bulbs don't need to be changed on the spot like tires do.

[CigaR007]

Another good reason to abandon GM altogether.

[Piwoslaw]

So there's no market for rear wheel skirts? Nobody's interested in them? No-one at all?

Then why the h*ll are so many people taking pictures of my car?
Two or three were surprised that the skirts aren't OEM.
And when people find out why I made them, they always ask: "Then why aren't they standard?"

Ah, well, but I live in a backward country...