Quote:
Originally Posted by woodchuck1
I assume that's sarcasm. I'm a little disappointed with BMW's penchant for making fake air intakes larger and larger to the point of ridiculousness. Do big fake air vents cool more effectively than small ones? It seems at odds with their (former?) no nonsense performance image.
American cars in the 60s and 70s were loaded with fake air intakes. I hated them then, and I hate them now.
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I don't wish to speak for Scott, but I believe he is referring to actual (vented) air intakes and not ones simply for aesthetics. I have some pictures of the X5's 'air curtain' (in the front lateral bumper) and 'air breather' (behind the wheelwell) showing the tire through the openings in my 'Horsepower and Speed - the graph' thread.
In the Motor Trend June 2009 report on the wind tunnel facility (in Munich, I believe) and the 7 series, they comment that aerodynamic drag is composed of 40% from the body design, 30% of a vehicle's total drag comes just from the wheels and wheel wells (which I never would have imagined), 20% from the underbody, and 10% from internal air (entering the radiator and engine compartment and then trying to exit after alot of internal turbulence).
It seems that these wheel and wheel well modifications make a significant difference in decreasing the drag coefficient, possibly as much as .03 it seems, which has contributed to the heavier and larger X5 now actually obtaining better HWY numbers than our current X3.
I am really hoping they have these in the next gen for us, and honestly, I would expect them to be used on everyone of their models when model change cycles mature.