Automotive Fakery

[kiseca]

Cliffe60 said:

HealeyV8 said:

I'm older than the OP and the big fake on cars of the seventies was the good old power bulge bonnet. Think of the MK1 Capri versus facelift. Yes I fitted one to my Mk1 and thought it looked the dogs dangly bits.
Also this was a time of plastic wheel covers to make steel wheels look like alloys.

To be fair , the Capri did have a range of engines from 1.3 to 3 litre. I assumed the bulge was to save costs making different parts and the 1.3 buyer wasn’t going to complain.

I don't know about later versions but the Mark 1 was available with or without a bulge. My brother had a 1.3 with a bulge, which was more sought after because that was the rarer option and it looked better both from outside and the view from behind the wheel.

I also, given the shape of the bulge, am not entirely sure the V6 needed it anyway. Maybe it needed it to clear the pancake filter but the inline 4 had one of those too. And the Essex V6, being pushrod, didn't have particularly big heads to push the whole intake structure up. Might be a different story for Cologne engined models.

[kiseca]

samoht said:

kiseca said:

Yep, it's been going on forever. It's just styling. I'll bet cars have had fake slats on them since the 1930s.

I give you the 1909 Stanley Steamer. A steam car doesn't need cooling vents on its bonnet, and if you look closely you'll see they're not actually vents, just bumps painted to look like vents.

Thanks for that!

I'll wouldn't be surprised if the bumps actually are there to give the panels some rigidity, but then done in a way to be a styling feature.

[Jaguar steve]

Faking words by pretending numbers are the same as letters.

[P5BNij]

thewarlock said:

ajprice said:

Today I learned there was a Ferrari 208. It happened when I read these posts about a 208 with 4 exhausts and scrolled up looking for pictures of a Peugeot .

Honestly never heard of a Ferrari 208 before. Ferrari 308 and 328, yes of course I knew about those. 208, Peugeot.

Yeah, it was a tax thing. Something like engines larger than 2.0L meant to had to pay double the VAT or something like that?

Someone will correct me, but it was something along those lines.

In Italy, I should add. Don't know if they sold them outside of Italy?

Yes the 2.0ltr tax thing was a genuine thing in Italy, Ferrari did it with their 208 and Maserati did it same thing with their Merak, I'm not sure how many 2.0ltr versions were made but they were only made from 1977 to 1979. Lamborghini also did it with their V8 Urraco, only 66 of which were ever sold.

Edited by P5BNij on Wednesday 16th June 19:55

[Fink-Nottle]

samoht said:

kiseca said:

Yep, it's been going on forever. It's just styling. I'll bet cars have had fake slats on them since the 1930s.

I give you the 1909 Stanley Steamer. A steam car doesn't need cooling vents on its bonnet, and if you look closely you'll see they're not actually vents, just bumps painted to look like vents.

So what you're saying is that at all times posers will be posers.

Don't you think there's a categorical difference between style and posing? Between effortlessness and trying too hard in a chalk-screechingly obvious way? Between New Order and Pet Shop Boys?

Those fake Audi exhausts, God almighty.

[Section 8]

This just in from pop legend Alexander O’Neal…

[Fastdruid]

jamieduff1981 said:

Cold said:

cheesesliceking said:

jamieduff1981 said:

With regards to "fake" vents, quite a number of them, especially on front wings above the skirts, are not vents at all but sharp edges to give clean separation for boundary layer control. People who know a lot less than they think they know will decree it as fakery, but they serve a fully functioning purpose - only that purpose isn't what the Dunning-Kruger-afflicted self-professed expert assumes it's there to mimic.

I’ve no idea what this means, please explain

It means us mortals are far too dumb to understand design.

For instance, the side vents on a current shape Range Rover. If you study them, you'll see they're actually part of the door and serve no purpose apart from making the door appear less of a slab.
Is it a good design that disguises an unwanted feature, or a bad design that has the feature in the first place?

It's more that people loudly point and criticise without really understanding what they're talking about.



Aerodynamics on e.g. aeroplanes are a bit different from cars and the presence of the ground and spinning wheels does things which end rendering more aerospace wisdom ineffective. Most know that in either case you want flow to separate as cleanly as possible and with as little energy as possible - but how to achieve that in cars can be a bit counterintuitive sometimes.

Sometimes little "fake" looking blanked vents on the front wings behind the wheels, or on the roof above the back windscreen or similar are there not to vent anything but to cause flow to break away cleanly rather than swirl and eddy down the surface of the car. It's not that the car will suddenly fly if you remove them, but the drag coefficient will go up a bit.

As an example of when they get it wrong.

In the case of my car you get a "river" running across the driver/passenger windows when it rains and you can't see the mirrors. A new part with a different design to the triangle where the mirror mounts (or replicate the new part by adding something like a small edge glued on) to disrupt the flow and it goes away.

https://www.talkford.com/threads/rain-on-side-wind...

[SlimJim16v]

jamieduff1981 said:

Sometimes little "fake" looking blanked vents on the front wings behind the wheels, or on the roof above the back windscreen or similar are there not to vent anything but to cause flow to break away cleanly rather than swirl and eddy down the surface of the car. It's not that the car will suddenly fly if you remove them, but the drag coefficient will go up a bit.

I disagree. Airflow needs to stay attached until it reaches the back, that's when you need a clean separation.

I don’t understand fake vents, in positions an actual working vent would be useful. Mainly seen on the rear bumper, though as discussed, also on front wings.

[iphonedyou]

Mammasaid said:

Your 'fake' AWD runs mainly in 2WD to assist with fuel economy, only engaging the rears when required. It's not marketed as a full off-road option, just as an assist in poor conditions.

Your post bring this to mind, no-one's forcing you to buy 'fakery'.

Indeed. I have an S3 saloon and it mooches about just dandy for the 360 days a year we have fine conditions, sipping petrol, and is great to drive on the 5 days a year we have snow.

If that's fake, fine. Costs beans to run and doesn't try to kill me on the commute. I like that.

[Cyder]

kambites said:

Any sort of side-skirt/diffuser/anything else which is meant to mimic an under-body aerodynamic device on a mainstream road car.

Those ‘fake diffusers’ on passenger cars are quite effective at reducing drag in the negative pressure area behind the car.

[SlimJim16v]

Cyder said:

Those ‘fake diffusers’ on passenger cars are quite effective at reducing drag in the negative pressure area behind the car.

Nope, most are 99% looks only. Other than supercars, the only actual working diffuser I can think of was on the MINI GP2. There's a video of it too.

[Cyder]

SlimJim16v said:

Cyder said:

Those ‘fake diffusers’ on passenger cars are quite effective at reducing drag in the negative pressure area behind the car.

Nope, most are 99% looks only. Other than supercars, the only actual working diffuser I can think of was on the MINI GP2. There's a video of it too.

Yep. I design them for a living, but what do I know.

Don’t confuse them working as a true downforce generating diffuser with them functioning to reduce drag behind the car.

[PH User]

I don't think that most people care if a car has a bit of fakery.

[PH User]

Cyder said:

SlimJim16v said:

Cyder said:

Those ‘fake diffusers’ on passenger cars are quite effective at reducing drag in the negative pressure area behind the car.

Nope, most are 99% looks only. Other than supercars, the only actual working diffuser I can think of was on the MINI GP2. There's a video of it too.

Yep. I design them for a living, but what do I know.

Don’t confuse them working as a true downforce generating diffuser with them functioning to reduce drag behind the car.

Yeah what would you know

[SlimJim16v]

Cyder said:

Yep. I design them for a living, but what do I know.

Don’t confuse them working as a true downforce generating diffuser with them functioning to reduce drag behind the car.

OK, I thought they did both. Are you saying diffusers don't reduce drag? I'd love to see some examples.

Or is it that fake diffusers help keep the air attached and used to help fill in the wake?

Edited by SlimJim16v on Thursday 17th June 00:06

[wibble cb]

DoctorX said:

This always irritated me.

In fairness, that was a fake VW Golf, the mk3 was rubbish

[fozzymandeus]

SlimJim16v said:

Nope, most are 99% looks only. Other than supercars, the only actual working diffuser I can think of was on the MINI GP2. There's a video of it too.

Also see Clio 3 Renaultsport

[kiseca]

Fink-Nottle said:

samoht said:

kiseca said:

Yep, it's been going on forever. It's just styling. I'll bet cars have had fake slats on them since the 1930s.

I give you the 1909 Stanley Steamer. A steam car doesn't need cooling vents on its bonnet, and if you look closely you'll see they're not actually vents, just bumps painted to look like vents.

So what you're saying is that at all times posers will be posers.

Don't you think there's a categorical difference between style and posing? Between effortlessness and trying too hard in a chalk-screechingly obvious way? Between New Order and Pet Shop Boys?

Those fake Audi exhausts, God almighty.

I'm saying what I said. I didn't refer to posers at all.

Sure, there's a difference between style and posing, but it's not one that I could put in words on a website in a way that would get universal acceptance because we're all going to see different things when we look at the same picture. So I don't try.

And I didn't like the music of New Order nor the Pet Shop Boys so I didn't pay either of them enough attention to tell you whether or not I thought one was stylish and the other a poser

The fake Audi exhausts don't bother me. Even the ones that have a nice shiny stainless steel tip through which exhaust gasses actually flow are nearly always still connected to a rusty iron pipe half the diameter about 6 inches out of sight under the bodywork so no, I don't care. My old XE had two nice shiny exhaust pipes, one each side of the back bumper, but it was a 4 cylinder engine with a single turbo. One exhaust output, the whole way down under the car, and then split just near the end for the two outlets. No reason for it other than to make the car look a bit different to the 20T model, which had two pipes next to eachother. EDIT: Actually I'm wrong. The 20T had no visible pipe. The two pipes together was a diesel.

It didn't bother me in the least. I thought the two pipes looked quite nice. And I feel no worse about pipes blowing down on the ground an inch in front of a completely non functional exhaust tip. The car looks better with them than without them. For me that's the end of the story. I find the Audi picture amusing but if I liked the car (I don't), that exhaust layout would have absolutely no influence over whether I'd buy one or not. On the other hand, if they made the whole car look plain and cheap and boring, that could have an influence.

Ironic from a man who drives a Note, but that's a whole other story

Edited by kiseca on Thursday 17th June 10:28

[FA57REN]

SlimJim16v said:

Nope, most are 99% looks only. Other than supercars, the only actual working diffuser I can think of was on the MINI GP2. There's a video of it too.

Also the diffuser on the Clio 197/200 which became effective above 100km/h and generated positive downforce.

Ironically one catalogue option was the Cup Spoiler for the top of the hatch, which increased drag...

[NDNDNDND]

Cyder said:

SlimJim16v said:

Cyder said:

Those ‘fake diffusers’ on passenger cars are quite effective at reducing drag in the negative pressure area behind the car.

Nope, most are 99% looks only. Other than supercars, the only actual working diffuser I can think of was on the MINI GP2. There's a video of it too.

Yep. I design them for a living, but what do I know.

Don’t confuse them working as a true downforce generating diffuser with them functioning to reduce drag behind the car.

Ok, can you explain how this:

reduces drag at the back of the car? Without a flat floor to clean up the airflow before the diffuser (as on the GP2 above) it looks to me more like an air scoop than a useful aerodynamic device.