(dramatic guitar music)
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- Hi and welcome to Car Stuff
- Whatta
- When we were at the Dream Car Exhibit
at the High Museum of Art, we saw
a group of nearly 20 cars
representing 8 decades of car design
from the 1930's to the start of the 21st Century.
- And nearly all of the vehicles on display
were streamlined in appearance,
and that's with good reason.
It was around the late 1920's and early 1930's
when the study of aerodynamics,
especially the idea of streamlining,
began to really gain popularity among automotive designers.
- Yeah, that's right.
And there was already a hunger
for faster cars, but that wasn't enough.
They wanted their designs to look fast, too.
- See, scale model wind tunneled testing
for early aircraft began at the close of the 19th Century
and drag coefficients of geometric shapes
have been tested and measured
in enclosed wind tunnel since 1871?
- Even the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur,
used a simple scale model wind tunnel
to study the effects of airflow
while developing the Wright Flyer in 1901.
It took them two more years
but they were able to use what they learned
in the wind tunnel to successfully get their design
off the ground in 1903.
- And by the 1920's, automotive designers and engineers
realized that an aerodynamic shape
could be beneficial to automobile bodies, too.
And it was around this time,
when a few streamlined designs began
to actually make it into production.
- And the vehicles on display
at the High Museum were from the 1930's and later.
So, let's just take a look at a few examples
of some of the wind tunnel tested
dream car designs that were there.
- [Voiceover] First up,
we have the 1934 Edsel Ford Model 40 Special Speedster.
- [Voiceover] The Speedster was designed
by Ford Motor Company's silent chief,
Bob Gregorie, specifically for Edsel Ford.
Who, at the time, was the President of Ford Motor Company
and the son of Ford Company founder, Henry Ford.
- Now this was a radical design
because most of the cars in the 1930's
were boxy compared to the sleek lines
of Edsel's dream car.
And as you might have guessed,
a scale model of the Speedster
was tested in a small wind tunnel
and the body work was not only streamlined,
but it was also light-weight and very strong
similar to the aircraft of the same era.
- And now we've got, the 1941 Chrysler Thunderbolt,
which we did an episode on earlier.
This car was revealed to the public
at the 1940 New York Auto Show,
and Chrysler touted it as "The Car of the Future".
It was specifically built to educate the public
about aerodynamics and streamlining.
Now, the Thunderbolt was promoted as having been tested
in a wind tunnel like the Speedster, right?
And this was to provide scientific studies
of how the car's shape dealt with continuous airflow
and how that information lead to refinements
that minimized resistance.
- That's right.
Now up next was the 1955 Chrysler Streamline X,
also known as Gilda.
Now this car was Ben's favorite car at the entire exhibit.
- [Voiceover] Oh, yeah!
- [Voiceover] So, he's a fan of this one.
The Gilda built Chrysler Streamline X
debuted at the 1955 Turrnin Automobile Show,
where it was hailed as shaped by the wind,
and it caused a sensation with it's experimental body.
And as you can clearly see, the Streamline X design
was heavily influenced by jet aircraft and rocketry
in the post-war era.
- [Voiceover] And now we've got a doubleheader,
the 1970 Lancia Stratos HF Zero
and Ferrari 512S Modulo.
At the time, automobile designers and makers
were engaged in this ongoing battle
to produce the ultimate wedge shaped car.
Well, Scott, as we can see both
of these cars have a radically low stance;
that's just 33 inches tall for the Lancia,
37 inches for the Ferrari.
And while these two wedge shaped Italian cars
may cut through the wind with ease,
they were both so low and the driver visibility
was so poor,
if you could see the windshield there,
the outlandish designs never made it to production.
- And that's just a few examples
of what we saw at the exhibit.
Now yes, the designs are radically different
across the various manufacturers
and spanning the decades,
but they all had one thing in common,
they were all trying to cheat the wind.
- You know it might be easy to design car body
that appears to be aerodynamic,
however, to really fine tune that design
to know that you're getting the most out of it
and to make it truly, you know, slippery,
you have to test it in a wind tunnel
just like automakers have been doing
for the past 90 years?
- Now here's an interesting side note, Ben,
Enzo Ferrari, known for stuffing powerful V-12 engines
into his early sports cars,
once said "Aerodynamics are for people
who can't build engines."
- Right and that's funny because Ferrari
recently spent over 1,000 hours
in the wind tunnel with a one third scale model
to perfect the aerodynamics of his California model.
For a brief time,
the California was the aerodynamic Ferrari ever made.
That is, until F12berlinetta GT was revealed
at the Genovia Motor Show in 2012.
- Ah ha. Now let us know what you think
about aerodynamics and automotive streamlining
in the comments section below.
And be sure to subscribe so you can keep up
with the latest Car Stuff.
- Can we keep the karate chop I did at the beginning?
- Of course we can.
- Awesome.
- Only we need to get something there
for you to actually hack in half.
- Um, we'll fix it in post, right?
- [Voiceover] Yeah.
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