car design thread

Absolutely. It also doesn't make it any easier that so many of them left the factory with the same color paint. I think Ferrari must have gotten a great deal on Red in the early days and are still working through the immense stock they acquired.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

I got some dirty looks at a recent concours when I said we should use non-red as a tie breaker in one of the classes.

 

my bad!
next time I'll know better!

 

That actually seems like a good idea. The non-red cars are rarer.

Ach, t'was only a minor thing, really.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

I left out the part where he was so happy he bought some crash helmet from some famous driver that had a little blood on it...

The Movers and Shakers: Remembering William L. Mitchell of GM Styling | Car Build Index

That U of M interview archived on the net has lots of great stories...

 

Bill was indeed 'a wild & crazy guy', no doubt about it

 

thoughts on the new audi q7? current owners dont like it. also, read where audi is coming out with a q8.

 

I wonder if that'll be popular in Mike Seals' neighborhood. Q8... Kuwait... get it?

I'm feeling far too irreverent lately.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

All my personal opinion here...

but if you go on a big yacht or a private jet. there are acres of it. This class of car it fits.

I personally love wood in luxury cars. Fake wood in cheap cars ruin things... but... real wood, real craftsmanship... hard to replace. Besides on a british car a wood dash is as much heritage as the shield is to ferrari, or a gated shifter.

I think it is beautiful to take something that we usually use for construction and make it gorgeous accent piece. The color, grain, vibrance etc is something that can not be duplicated. A beautiful piece of wood can stand by itself. To integrate it into one of the worlds best cars makes complete sense. Also, with these convertibles I think they are trying to get that wooden boat chriscraft style or image. I think it works. Im not a fan of that particular wood set up. But to take a living thing that is never uniform, almost never symetrical and not always easy to work with and make it into what these guys do is magic.

Im all for carbon fiber in a 458 and in the appropriate cars... but it doesn't belong in a rolls.

 

I happen to agree 100%...
and yes, please no wood in Ferraris that you very much

 

The front end on most cars have sort of a air damn and/or chin spoiler to maintain aerodynamic stability on the highway. Correct?

So why are the utes from Honda (and Lexus) designed otherwise? Did their customers have difficulties with encountering parking lot bumpers?

Seems like this reverse-aero would create lift at speeds.
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Certainly can't speak to why Honda did what they did, but yes those air dams you see on most cars help in improving aero performance and usually help in cooling.
For off road vehicles the ramp/departure angles are critical for off roading.Maybe they figured the ability to clear ramp angles was more important than the aero performance. Hard to say what the aero numbers are, and what the cooling requirements are without wind tunnel data or computer simulations (CFD).
Just my guess.

And maybe, they just think they look lighter

 

What if the area on the bottom of the car behind the front axle was concave? Alternatively, the rake of the car might compensate. Would that negate any lift with suction?

All the best,
Andrew.

 

you need to be going pretty fast for any of that to be meaningful 50mph-60mph +

 

That's probably what it is... to give the appearance of being an off-roader. In other words, to justify the "sport" in ute.

Also, a quick look at several reviews/reports it's "aerodynamic style" (with "style" always following "aerodynamic").

Anyway, I always thought it looked pretty weird.

 

Do front chin spoilers do anything at speeds lower than that? I presumed they were intended for 60-80mph anyway.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

they are effective, but each vehicle is different
at speeds below 35 I believe you'd be hard pressed to find a significant effect, but as I said, each vehicle has it's own characteristics
it's more art than science
'one size fits none'

 

I had no idea.

Do you have any data for chin spoilers on cars you worked on? CTS-V? Front downforce/antilift curve over increasing speed with plots for with and without would be very interesting to see.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

I kept much of that, but unfortunately, that data is proprietary.
Never let your competitors know how, what, when etc.

 

Fair enough.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

I love reading about aerodynamics.

AutoSpeed - Blowing the Vortex, Part 1
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cool how they used to test for aero on the street with yarn tufts
we've come a long way, but it's still both art & science

 

Some f the Style Auto and Car Styling had photos of cars in wind tunnel testing where they also had the car on a platform to get degrees off of straight ahead.

The old Car Styling had a series on the Ford GT 40/Mark IV that had lots of development work documentation.

The numbers to look at are Cd (drag), Clf (lift front) and Clr (lift rear).

Wish I was home to look up some of the diagrams with pressures.

When looking at the tufts check for ends that have moved off the car (air flow has not stayed attached enough to hold the tuft down for its length) and for tufts that are hanging down (no airflow to override gravity).

Jeff

 

what I think is wild is the New GM SUVS Escalade, Tahoe, Yukon have the lowest chin spoilers. I am surprised they clear parking blocks. They probably JUST clear them. People talk about how they drive a big tall suv and they rule the road... but a subaru outback is less likely to drag its chin than one of those