Interesting Aerodynamic Cars (Mike Vetter's ETV, also Avion)

[freebeard]

Speaking of Falcons, in Argentina they couldn't chop the top or section the body, but the rules didn't say you couldn't narrow it.




justacarguy.blogspot.com/2023/09/there-are-always-new-gun-things-to.html

Slant-nose Falcon, who knew? A cut-away drawing shows a front radiatot, or possibly a front oil cooler and rear radiator.

[freebeard]

The very first body fabricated by Figoni: early streamlining on a 1924 Bignan 11 CV chassis. Joseph Figoni - Le Grand Couturier de la Carrosserie Automobile -

[bandit86]

[aerohead]

Flipper says, 'turn that puppy around 180-degrees!'
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-a...der-cd0-05.jpg

[freebeard]

Cd=0.12 in 1964

1964 Panhard CD LM64: The most aerodynamically efficient Le Mans race car ever made!

What did this little Panhard streamliner achieve? Its coefficient of drag is a Le Mans record of 0.12. That’s absurdly low!

So we’ve established that the CD LM64 is extremely aerodynamically efficient. It was also extremely light weight at just 1230 pounds. Add in a supercharged 848cc flat-twin engine with 78 horsepower and you get a car that can run at 137 MPH at flat chat.

Compare to the Volkhart-Saggitta that got 90MPH with 25HP.

[freebeard]

Note the air cleaner is between the rear-view mirror and the windshield.

1966 Cannara - The One that Started the Wedge Car Movement!

3.5K views 2 days ago
Ray Cannara, a native Floridian, was a successful designer from the start winning a $4000 scholarship in the 1962 Fisher Body Guild contest at age 15. At 18 he was accepted into the prestigious Art Center for Transportation Design located in Los Angeles, California. Unlike most fledgling designers, Cannara was already working on his first full-size car design when he started Art Center in 1964 – a car he would drive from Florida to California in 1966 during his college years. …

Three years later Marchelo Gandini stole the design for his Autobianchi, in 1969.

It's a bobber. Cut down from a station wagon frame, with side pipes.

[Bicycle Bob]

Cone-fronted cylinders were racy stuff in Edwardian times. I think that the wedge came back to emulate supersonic aircraft, which are faster without the blunt front edges cars need to establish stagnation points and generate the initial boundary layer.

[freebeard]

And tail lights that looked like jet exhaust?

[Bicycle Bob]

Detroit cars in particular have a long history of borrowing shapes from aircraft. Some of the earlier ones inadvertently produced lift, which gave streamlining a reputation for dangerous handling for decades. In the early 50s, there were a lot of propeller spinner shaped bumper guards, known in the styling department as "Jane Russels." Then came the jet era, with fake intakes and exhausts, and big tail fins. There's even a picture of the first GM Firebird show car with a couple of guys ready to pull wheel chocks away, as if the brakes couldn't hold it against the very feeble jet thrust.

[freebeard]

I regret that I didn't get a set of Studebaker Hawk (it was 1960) fiberglass tail fins and graft them onto my bullet-nose Champion.