Airflow coming across the roof is very turbulent and produces very little down force when it hits the center portion of the wing.
I'm not sure when it starts to produce effective aerodynamics as that includes several factors other than just down force such as stability enhancement and turbulence reduction. I personally felt the S4 wing looked odd at certain view angles but the wing performed better than most and smoothed the exit airflow other than the SP350 wing.Įsprit wings produce usable down force from 80 mph. As I noted before a few street wings tried to find clear non turbulent air such as the 92 high wing and the S4 mid hatch wing which is mounted the same height as the high wing only moved forward a bit. So the Esprit wings are way more styling driven than function, and top speeds (and fuel economy) will go up without them (the V8 GT had no wing), but of course having a wing automatically makes some think their car is so fast it absolutely needs one to keep it stuck to the road.Ĭlick to expand.Lotus played with wings and mounting heights but they always wind tunneled and track tested them.
#Pontiac fiero spoiler driver
The wing caught on though, simply because it looked hairy and made the car look faster, for years customers who sent there winged Countach's to the factory for service would get them back sans wing (Chief test driver Balboni would have them taken off so he wouldn't get his ass kicked by a Ferrari on the autostrada whilst on a test drive) I remember Walter Wolf was the first to put a wing on the back of his Countach, he got Dallara in Italy to make it and the Lamborghini factory engineers hated it because the extra drag it created knocked off over 15 mph off the cars top speed. Subsequent wings came about as inexpensive ways of facelifting the look of the car.
The wing on the '88 commemorative more than likely came about because Lotus were developing the suspension on what was to become the '88 Pontiac Fiero and the Fiero GT had a very similar If not identical wing fitted ,MJK (and the GM people who owned Lotus)liked the way it looked.