- Quick, when you think of a car
that has the best aerodynamics,
what car do you think of?
A wedge car, a teardrop, a fastback maybe?
Well, the answer is probably
not what you're thinking.
Aerodynamics play an
extremely important role
when it comes to speed,
performance, and handling,
and they can also make a car
look really freaking cool.
(driving music)
But looks can be deceiving,
and car shapes that appear
to cut through the air
might actually have horrible
aerodynamic properties.
In this video, we're gonna
see how aerodynamics work,
how they've evolved over
time, and what happens
when you take aerodynamics
just a little too far.
Stick around to see some of
the most truly insane concepts
that were banned from racing.
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To understand aerodynamics,
we need to think of them
as two separate forces.
The first is friction,
which matters less than you might think.
Otherwise, we'd be obsessed
with getting our cars all nice and oily
to help them slip through the air easier.
And since Land O'Lakes Racing Butter
isn't our sponsor today, it's safe to say
that friction is not the
only major factor in aero.
(gun cocks)
The second, much more
important, force is turbulence,
all that air jostling around
a car's nooks and crannies,
slowing it down.
The smoother a car's airflow
is, the less turbulence,
and that's why truly
aerodynamic cars have features
like fully enclosed
underbodies, flush headlights,
and body panels that
don't disrupt air as much.
(gun cocks)
The main way we quantify all this
is through a score called
the drag coefficient.
The lower the drag coefficient,
the more aerodynamic a car is.
Currently, the Mercedes A-Class sedan
has a drag coefficient of .22,
the lowest drag coefficient
of any production car
currently on the market.
On the other side of the spectrum,
the brick-on-wheels side,
we have the Hummer H2 at .57.
.57 is bad.
Now that we know the
basics of aerodynamics,
where did all this hunger to
go with the flow all start?
(gun cocks in slow-motion)
(speaks in slow-motion)
(high-intensity music)
(beeps)
In 1898, a full 10 years
before the Model T,
and 103 years before Post Malone was born,
our aerodynamic journey begins with
a little steam-powered number
called La Jamais Contente.
I know I butchered that,
you don't have to tell me,
I'm just gonna butcher all your languages
if that's okay with you guys.
La Jamais Contente is French
for "never satisfied".
That's right, they
named a car after my ex.
This vehicle is straight
out of Mario Kart.
It weighed 3,200 pounds
and had 62 horsepower,
which was like 2,000 horsepower back then.
The Jamais Contente is
most famous for being
the first car to go over
100 kilometers per hour.
And while its design
is impressively streamlined for the time,
a lot of its aerodynamic design was ruined
by the driver basically
sitting on top of it.
This was before innovations
like wind tunnel testing;
they mostly went with what looked fast.
And I gotta admit, I kinda want one.
- [Voiceover] Reloading!
- As car manufacturing
became a major industry,
carmakers started to get
interested in streamlined designs.
The first attempt at a
streamlined mass-produced car
was the Rumpler Tropfenwagen,
produced from 1921-25,
and it had a drag coefficient of .28.
Also, it's maybe the most fun
car name to say of all time.
Try it out: Rumpler Tropfenwagen.
It's German for drop car, so
named for its teardrop shape.
The Tropfenwagen narrowed
so sharply at its nose
that there was only room for
one person in the front row.
Despite how literally
cutting-edge this car was,
it was a flop, with only about
100 of them being produced.
By the time we got to the 30s,
aero was becoming a much
bigger part of car design,
and we started to see the
influence of art deco design
as cars started taking
many of their design cues
from the sleek, sculpted steel
of the world of aeronautics.
We started to see stuff like
fins and sloping wheel wells.
A lot of it was still more about looks
than true aerodynamic design,
but the intent was still there.
In the 30s, Hans Ledwinka and Paul Jeray,
the latter of whom also
drew up freaking zeppelins,
designed the Tatra 77.
The Tatra went beyond mere streamlining,
with a drag coefficient of .2455.
It was the first mass-produced car to be
truly, scientifically,
aerodynamically tested.
Jeray used wind tunnels
that were initially built
to aerodynamically test,
what else, but zeppelins,
to develop the design of the Tatra.
The Tatra would also
inspire Ferdinand Porsche
to develop the Volkswagen Beetle,
and by inspire, I mean completely rip off.
You can learn more about the controversy
in our Past Gas series on the Beetle.
While we're in pre-war Germany,
I present to you the Schlörwagen,
a 1939 prototype nicknamed the "aeropill",
because it looks like a pill-bug.
I guess.
It had a mind-blowing
drag coefficient of .113.
It was an incredible car,
aside from the terrible
visibility, cooling,
and vulnerability to tipping
over from crosswinds.
Hmm.
By the 50s, aerodynamic
design was mainstream.
Decades before the Nintendo DS,
the French gave us the
incredible Citroën DS.
DS is short for goddess
because DS sounds like déesse.
When it was unveiled at the
1955 Paris Motor Show of 1955,
it received 80,000 orders in 10 days,
a record for initial orders
that stood for 61 years
until the launch of the
Tesla Model 3 in 2016.
The DS would stay in
production until 1975.
The body of the DS was as significant
for what it didn't have
as for what it did,
with frameless doors and a
complete lack of a grill.
Also it had the most aerodynamic
steering wheel of all time.
This thing is awesome.
(metal music)
If there's anything YouTubers
like me want to be in life,
it's a musician.
Unfortunately, I have no talent.
(guitar playing)
But I won't let that stop me
from making my own band shirt.
(metal music)
I'm super stoked that WheelHouse
finally has its own shirt,
and I'm double stoked on how it came out.
I really wanted our shirt
to emulate some of my favorite bands.
It's got a haunted house on it
'cause it's WheelHouse,
and I'm a spooky boy.
(metal music)
Also, there's a lot of
WheelHouse Easter eggs
included on the shirt.
Definitely a melk reference
on there somewhere,
you gotta look for it though.
I love the shirt, I love how
it came out, and you will too.
You can get it on our
store, donutmedia.com,
and live out all of your
headbanger fantasies.
(metal music)
(guitar playing)
There's one type of car
that always gets brought up
when talking about aerodynamics,
and most of these car
designs were done by one man.
I'm talking about Giorgetto Giugiaro,
a man with a beautiful
name only transcended
by his beautiful wedge cars.
Giugiaro's aesthetic was
nicknamed "folding paper",
so called because his cars looked like
they had been shaped out of origami.
Giugiaro introduced
a whole new interpretation
of aerodynamics,
replacing the previous
trend of rounded edges
with sharp, angular, geometric designs
that were intensely futuristic.
Giugiaro designed
countless incredible cars
for pretty much every European carmaker.
Chances are, he designed one
of your bucket list cars.
From the Maserati Ghibli,
to the BMW M1, to the Lotus Esprit,
to the incredibly "Back to the
Future"-istic DMC DeLorean,
to the incredibly sexy,
breathtakingly sleek Volkswagen Golf.
Oh man, soak it all in.
Seriously though, this guy
designed pretty much everything.
He was even hired by
pasta producer Barilla
to design his own shape of pasta,
the Marille, drag coefficient unknown.
I'm still waiting for Barilla to pay me
for my pasta design, the Wooshy Boy.
It's pasta shaped like...
It's a Turbo.
That'd actually be pretty good.
Yum.
Unlike his pasta,
Giugiaro's influence
on car design lives on.
His wedge shapes are
still hugely influential
on modern luxury cars that are looking for
that sharp, knife-through-the-air look.
If you want further evidence,
look no further than the Tesla Cybertruck.
His signature style remains shorthand
for futuristic, aerodynamic excellence.
(sighs)
Okay, I know that was all
super freaking inspiring,
and you're welcome,
but there's one kind of
giant caveat to all this.
These sleek cars weren't
actually that aerodynamic.
It turns out nature knows what it's doing.
More organic shapes like the teardrop
are more naturally aerodynamic.
Sharp edges contribute to
turbulent wind patterns,
which slow the car down.
The BMW M1, for example,
has a mediocre .40 drag coefficient.
To put that in perspective,
a Toyota Sienna minivan comes in at .30.
So now that we're reaching
the modern age of cars,
what actually makes a car aerodynamic?
This whole time we've been
thinking about aerodynamics
as simply car versus wind
as it travels horizontally
through the air.
But what if a car's design could actually
use the wind to its advantage?
Well, that's where downforce comes in.
Downforce is the increased
vertical downward force
on the tires of the car,
which gives it better
traction, especially in turns.
At lower speeds, downforce
isn't that important.
However, the faster you get,
the more crucial downforce becomes,
and that's when we get into
the magical realm of ground effects.
(big bang music)
In the mid-60s, designers introduced
the most basic of
downforce elements: wings.
At first, they were mounted
high above the chassis
to take advantage of wind that hadn't been
whipped around by the body of the car.
But that proved to be
incredibly dangerous,
as you might imagine,
as the wings could get ripped
off and cause collisions.
Check out the wing on
Sarah's LeMons Miata.
It's inspired by the same
design, and it's high as hell.
Check out this Bumper to
Bumper episode about it.
In 1967, Lotus became the first team
to install a spoiler on a Formula 1 car.
The next significant
milestone in aerodynamics
was made possible by Lotus as well.
After they struggled in the 1977 season,
Colin Chapman wrote a 27-page paper
filled with ideas on
how to create downforce.
He realized he could take the design
of a fighter bomber's
wing-mounted outlets,
and simply turn that design upside down
and use it to create
downforce on a race car.
When the team started
testing different designs,
they realized that, as the
speed of the car increased,
the underbody got drawn
closer to the road,
which, due to the Bernoulli effect,
increased the downforce to insane levels.
Don't know what the Bernoulli effect is?
Don't worry, I gotcha.
(cows mooing)
(classical music)
Real quick explanation
of the Bernoulli effect.
Very simply,
as the speed of a fluid
increases, pressure decreases.
Air under a car acts as a fluid,
so the faster the air moves under it,
the lower the pressure under the car.
You got a high pressure
zone on top of the car,
low pressure underneath,
that creates suction,
which draws the body of
the car to the ground
and puts pressure on those tires.
Soon, teams were racing off the track
to develop new ground effects,
with racing rule makers
hot on their heels,
banning most adaptations as
they were being developed.
Williams' F1 essentially
designed the entire FW07 chassis
to be a giant ground effects generator.
One major advantage was little skirts
that intentionally touched
the ground at all times,
keeping that suction underneath the car.
Another notable car was the
Brabham Alfa Romeo BT46B fan car,
which utilized a horizontal fan.
Brabham claimed that the
fan cooled the engine,
but in reality it reduced air
pressure underneath the car,
effectively sucking it to the track.
Other racers complained that the fan
was blowing debris onto their faces,
and when another car
leaked oil on the track,
it seemingly gave the fan
car an unbeatable advantage
as it could exert enough downforce
to essentially negate the
slippery effect of the oil.
That's freaking sick.
The fan car lasted for just three races
before Formula 1 caught up
and banned so-called fan
car designs altogether.
(gun cocks)
So, with all these admittedly
necessary safety regulations
kind of throttling Formula
1 and other racing leagues,
where could a race fan turn to
if they wanted to see
what cars would look like
if they took advantage of all these
newly-developed, aerodynamic advantages?
The answer was the Can-Am Challenge Cup,
which ran from 1966 to 1987.
In that time, Can-Am cars were often timed
with faster laps than their
Formula 1 counterparts.
They were governed by what was
called group 7 regulations.
These rules were basically
that there were no rules.
No rules on engine size,
no rules on vehicle weight,
no rules on turbochargers, superchargers,
everything was basically allowed,
you just have to add
seatbelts and wear a helmet.
And as for ground effects,
you guessed it, there were no rules.
The McLaren team was especially dominant
in the early years of Can-Am.
Instead of resorting to gimmicks,
their cars were known
for their refined designs
and extensive fine tuning.
Tragically, Bruce McLaren was killed
as he was testing the Can-Am McLaren M8D,
as the rear body work
separated from the car,
causing it to lose downforce
and spinning him into a flag station.
Bruce was a pretty iconic
figure in Formula 1,
if you'd like to learn
more about his life,
check out our series
on McLaren on Past Gas.
It's three parts long,
and it's really good,
I think you should check it out.
In later years,
the Porsche 917 was an
especially dominant car,
with over 1500 horsepower
that sucked up so much gas
that even Can-Am had to change
their rules for fuel
efficiency in response.
Just look at this thing.
That's a lot of downforce.
Perhaps the strongest contender
for aerodynamics innovation
in the Can-Am era
was (stutters)...
Was (stutters)...
Chaparral Race Cars, founded
by Hap Sharp and Jim Hall.
They aggressively pushed the
envelope of aerodynamic design.
Their crowning achievement
was the original 2J,
not to be confused with the 2JZ,
a race car that employed two engines.
A massive Chevy drove the car,
while a secondary engine that
they took out of a snowmobile
powered two fans located at the 2J's rear.
These fans sucked the air
out from underneath the car,
which was effectively vacuum-sealed
by these skirts on the side,
essentially suction-cupping
the car to the road.
Pretty freaking sick.
The 2J was too crazy even for Can-Am,
and would be banned shortly
after its introduction,
and then made its way
into "Gran Turismo 4"
as a really fun car to drive.
All these advances in science
would continue to cause headaches
for racing associations trying
to bring the safest, fairest,
and most exciting
entertainment to race fans.
Which brings us to (coughs)...
dirty air.
If you follow Formula 1,
you've probably heard of dirty air by now.
Remember way back at
the start of this video,
when I mentioned that turbulence
was the most important
factor in aerodynamics?
(car revving)
If a car can avoid creating
unnecessary turbulence,
it's naturally more aerodynamic.
But what if the air hitting
the car is already turbulent?
Behind each race car is an
area of turbulence, dirty air.
This reduces the ability
of the chasing car
to generate downforce and grip its tires
to the ground as effectively.
The more cars you're behind,
the more you're going to suffer
the effects of dirty air.
And when it's harder to catch
up, that means worse racing.
The solution?
Well, theoretically,
making these cars less
reliant on downforce
would make dirty air less of a problem.
But downforce is also what makes a car
so aerodynamic and fast.
It's a paradox, and one that Formula 1
is still grappling with today.
Over here in the states, IndyCar got
around the dirty air problem
by designing their cars
to make more downforce
from ground effects,
and we can expect Formula 1
to do the very same in 2022.
Huh, I managed to explain dirty air
without doing a fart joke.
Not to toot my own horn or anything.
- [Voiceover] Boom!
- So, we've raced all the
way through the 20th century,
and now we're back to today.
What's the state of
modern car aerodynamics?
Well, well...
Well... (chuckles)
Well, have you ever noticed that
all cars on the road
today kinda look the same?
It turns out that dedicating your design
to lowering that
all-important drag coefficient
is, well, kind of a drag,
and that's because, in their
quest to improve mileage,
car manufacturers are being drawn towards
the same scientific principles
of aerodynamic design.
Essentially, every car
today is a Tropfenwagen,
aka a teardrop car,
because they all follow
nature's ideal aerodynamic design.
As a raindrop falls vertically to Earth,
it forms the shape of least resistance,
and that, in turn, is the ideal
shape for an aerodynamic car
as it drives horizontally across land.
On the plus side,
even the un-flashiest
of consumer cars today
are incredibly aerodynamic
compared to their predecessors.
The new challenge for auto designers
is to find innovative and new variations
on what we now know to be the
best, ideal aerodynamic shape.
Also, in the future
we could have renewable
energy so plentiful
that we could forget about
drag coefficient altogether
and just build whatever looks cool.
We could be driving on Mars,
where the air is 100 times thinner,
no air resistance to worry about.
But me personally, I wanna
live underwater like SpongeBob,
and have to deal with some aquadynamics.
I'm gonna get my boater's license
and drive a hamburger car.
All right, I hope you enjoyed
that episode on aerodynamics.
I think I learned a
lot, I hope you did too.
If you haven't subscribed to Donut yet,
please consider it, it
would really help us out.
And check out our podcast, Past Gas,
on its other channel, Donut Podcasts.
Follow Donut on social media @donutmedia,
follow me @nolanjsykes.
Be kind, I'll see you next time.
(beep)
Influence of art deco on cars.
(farts)
And we started to see the...
