Worked very well as a door stop, I’m told.
Judging by her expression, the spoiler isn’t the most comfortable place to recline.
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Ugh; looks like somebody decided Bertone‘s work needed more Vette and Mustang. Which, as any reasonable person can see, is quite incorrect.
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And here I’d almost forgotten about the Mitsubishi Conquest tsi:
I had a chance to ride in one around a test track at >120 mph as a youth during a launch event. That may have had an undue influence on me…
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Computational fluid dynamics was being developed in the 1970s or earlier. However, back then it was still cheaper to build physical models and test in wind tunnels. The top super computers were used for CFD back then, but much of that was modeling nuclear weapons.
General Dynamics did not get its first engineer educated in fluid dynamics until about 1980 or so, as best I know. The one I knew personally said he was the only one at Fort Worth, which had the greatest need of GD divisions designing aircraft and ships. The original F-16 was almost certainly designed without use of CFD.
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Here’s some classic wedge cars of the 1980s to add to the mix here:
While not as cool as the GNX, the Reatta had that 1980s aesthetic down.
And its dashboard was a piece of vaporwave magic:
Then there was the Subaru XT:
Speaking of vaporwave dashboards:
Even Aston Martin got into the wedge game with the spectacular Lagonda:
Further upping the ante with its ultimate example of 80s excess dashboard:
(those are CRTs to boot)
I used to love the look of the Nissan Pulsar as a kid:
And the Toyota MR-2 which was also snazzy:
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God, I miss VFDs
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The Lambo wasn’t even tested in wind tunnels.
but it looked cool
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For much of Lamborghini’s existence, their design philosophy wasn’t “let’s build a great car” so much as “let’s build a great looking car”.
By all accounts they were pretty terrible - not particularly fast or functional but the “grins per minute” were off the charts.
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According to Jay Leno, his Countach is about as aerodynamic as a brick.
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Tom Karen oversaw the design and production of Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder from Star Wars (1977): one of the models was built upon the chassis of a Bond Bug – the wheels hidden by mirrors angled at 45° to the ground.
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I wondered how much the Star Wars designs inspired car designs and vice versa. It looks like the inspiration was pretty much one-way. (Though ironically, in this case, the landspeeder was actually very round and not-at-all wedge-shaped.)
It’s interesting to compare the Bond Bug to the Aptera, as design exemplars of their ages…
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With a name like Vanwall I’d assume you were allergic to wedge-shaped cars.
1958 Vanwall Formula 1 as an example - a tubular design, if ever there was one
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In other hand, If you prefer a solid brick design:
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I WANT THIS DASHBOARD
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