I figured a lot of rodders who build their cars take a whole lot of inspiration from the boys who first started taking fenders off Model As and tearing down the salt in the late forties. Theres a whole bunch of 40s/50s style 32s, 34s and As, and I think there are even a few belly tankers with license plates on the road. I love the aircraft like quality that many of these early land speed racers had, like Schneider trophy seaplanes for the salt. So has anybody gone the next step and built a road legal streamliner? Theres so much inspiration, and such a wide variety of shapes and styles with tons of flexibility, that I cant possibly be the first one to think of it. Yet Ive not seen anything like it on the HAMB so why not? Any of you ever thought about it? Any of you ever done it?! Here's a thing I've been working on. I wanted two seats and to be able to put it on a Triumph Herald chassis - hence the 92" wheelbase and squat looks. I reckon with a longer wheelbase you could make a real nice looking machine.
The trouble with tanks is I think they look beautiful when they're in racing trim. By the time you got headlights and tail lights and turn signals and wing mirrors stuck to them (and fenders in some countries) they loose a bit of that clean speed look. Also a lot of places don't let you use lexan windshields, you have to use auto windshields, which are generally flat and I don't think they'd look right without that blown bubble. Here's a few of the better streetable ones here (never knew that second one was a two seater - training tank?!) So these do exist, though I reckon if I wanted to make a tank for the road I'd try and make pop-up/retractable headlights. What I want to see is some road going versions of these: These are some of my inspirations. I like the lexan engine cover on the MG EX135.
If you look at many sports racers they were streamliners with two seats and headlites. If you built such a car it would end up looking like a sports car. And they are called "Tanks" not tankers. Tankers bring gas to the station.
Those street legal belly tanks are nothing more than art cars. I think they are ridiculous novelties. Not my thing. This, however, is pretty cool: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/?p=1591
Hi all, Original post corrected, my apologies. I guess a lot of the fifties racing cars like the Lotus IX, Elvas, Lolas etc looked a bit like bobbed tail streamliners. I quite like the long-tail teardrop aerodynamics of a land speed racer though. I see what you mean - once the cockpit gets any bigger than the bare minimum it starts to look quite different. Hi Ryan - I agree on the streetable belly tank, much as I love their shape by the time they're built for the street they are compromised, and that says nothing of how I'd feel about trying to drive one on the road in traffic. I've seen the Buick special a few times. I think it looks fantastic (from the back especially - I might do somthing different with the front). But the chances of me making somthing like that are quite remote - you'll notice my inspirations have considerably fewer curves! Here are two fromthe swoopy thread that sort of fit the bill: Waaaaaay over my compound-curve quota though! This Alpha has similar proportions to some rear engine LSRs: Fewer curves too.
Highway mpg is a big thing for me - much as I love driving my Plymouth I can't afford to run it on a 100 mile round trip every day at $9 a gallon. And since 3 hours a day is a big part of sombody's life to spend in a car, I'd like to do it in somthing interesting. No reason I can't use some techniques that rodders use to go fast to make somthing go a little more economically. I'd be looking at an aluminium body (I HATE working with fibreglass). Instead of welding I'd rivet it together. Get the polishing mop on it and it should look pretty sweet.
Maybe not the type of pure, purpose-built 'streamliner' you have in mind, but what about building a 'Bonneville-styled' '53 Studebaker coupe?? You could slam it, chop the top, clean up the nose a bit, remove or fare-in the bumpers and run steel wheels with skinnies and Moon-style spun-aluminum full wheel disks. etc. etc., like the LSR guys do - and you could end up with something that would be both authentic looking and still street-legal and drivable - and also, be extremely slick, both aerodynamically and esthetically too! Mart3406 ===========
That is true, but the last time I looked Formula 1 and Top Fuelers had horrible drag coefficients. But even standing still, a Stude, a T/Fer, and an F1 car all look scary fast and swoopy cool.
Thanks for the insirational stuff guys. The stude is about the best HAMB friendly production car in the States as far as aerodynamics is concerned - the Carrera Panamericana Studes always lead the pack. Aerodynamics and low weight I think go a long way towards this. Really like that Alfa 163, looks a lot like the Auto Union Coupe that never got built. I'm still carving away at my drawing: I've put the cockpit back a little and altered the front. What I'd really like to do is get it solid-modelled and run some CFD on it, it's the little tweaks, especially around the rear, that could make big differences to how streamlined this thing is. For headlights, I reckon I can use some sealed beams hidden behind flush-fitting clear covers screwed into the body work. The shapes are all pretty simple to hand form, the most difficult being the fender 'pods' covering the top of the front wheels. They're not really necessary but without them the car is a bit featureless. I think it'd look a lot like MGs EX135 and EX179 but with the two person cockpit stuck on top. There are a few reverse curves and a few compound curves but because everything is rivetted together (and to a frame) I think I can tackle them individually without screwing up a massive single panel.
You could probably drive the Austin-Healey streamliners on the street, but parallel parking would be a bitch:
The thing with F1 cars is they're not made to go fast. They're made to go fast round corners. All those downforce aids add masses of drag to them, but taking a corner at high speed wins more races than reaching a higher top speed on the straights. Those big fat wheels don't help the aero much either. Same thing with the wing on a top fueler, but I reckon that might be more efficient than an F1 wing.
I love that Healey, about the same wheelbase as the chassis I'd like to use too. I don't think parallel parking would be that bad, if I can get my 60 Plymouth into a British sized parking space then I can do it with those Austins!
How about a Jag XKE with a diesel engine? Not sure if I am kidding or not. But it would work. Something like a TDI VW engine should give you a top speed of 100 MPH and 40+ MPG.
I was chatting to a pal about something like this. In the end we figured using a glass Porsche 356 coupe body on a Beetle pan and a diesel Smart car motor, while keeping everything as light as possible would make an excellent and very economical commuter car. The diesel Smart gets an alleged 70 to the gallon, so with better weight and aero, you should beat that. The early 356 went pretty well considering how little power it had available. I like the idea of a Herald chassis though. How about making a "one sided" roof and fitting a hard tonneau over the other side. Removeable for carrying passengers or for sunny days. I think light weight will be more help to gain economy than aerodynamics in real world street driving. A small diesel engine would most likely be the best thing too. Depends how madly deep into it you want to getinto it I suppose! Ending up with a cool car is probably more important than all out economy, or?
A discussion like this is not complete without Frank Costin's designs. And this one, which is not by costin, but looks a it like it could have been one.
Even with headlights this would be cool. So long as you didn't have to turn! By weslake at 2007-05-20
Frank Costin was the master of aerodynamic shapes. Did you know he had no idea what his designs looked like until after they were built True, they were all done by math. He would hand over pages and pages of figures to metal shapers describing the shapes and they would build from that.
Costin's cars are absolute things of beauty. I was at the VSCC Spring Start event at Silverstone race track recently and we had the opportunity to see a number of Costin bodied cars (as wellas a ton of stuff for the Cyclecar thread - shame I left my camera at home really ). I've always had a thing for the Lotus XI. Rick, I didn't know it was a recreation, I always assumed it was a full restoration. There's some great footage of the two Healeys return to Bonneville on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuO0bePk68c I think the original footage is around somwhere too. James - I thought the same thing a while ago! The trouble is that the speedster GRP replica bodies are all pretty high end stuff, and even the cheapest go for thousands. Incidentally, there's a cracking kit car body available for a very low price called the Sammio Spyder, based on a Triumph chassis/floorpan/bulkhead: Not sure about commuting in the UK in a roadster though! I've thought about the half cockpit design (I REALLY like head/cockpit fairings!) but I'd like to be able to regularly put two people in it, and I'm not sure SWMBO would like being stuck out in the rain. The powerplant I'm interested in using is a Geo metro 1.0l engine, with LPG (around 50-60% the price of petrol in the UK). LPG has a lower calorific value than petrol so costs work out about 70% that of petrol (In the UK, diesel is more expensive than petrol by about the same amount it is more efficient - great). I take your point about weight, but for the type of driving most of my miles are done (sitting at 70mph on long straight roads) I think aero has the biggest advantage. Still, I think I can get the car lighter than the original Herald body (I'm aiming for 700kg, or 1550lbs kerb), so it isn't going to weigh tons. It's funny the things that add weight to a car, having doors instead of a hop-in type of body makes a difference. I haven't made a decision on that yet . . . Another idea I am looking at is a reverse trike design, where weight is the primary consideration, and aerodynamics suffer a bit (open wheel design, maybe need to put some Frank Lockhart Stutz style wheel spats on it). Other problems are custom engine adaptors and having to invert and flip a VW transaxle, and a really irritating shifter mechanism. Plus with all that done, the car has to pass a test and pay road tax. BUT it would satisfy my fenderless itch. sgtlethargic - I've seen that template a whole bunch, if you look carefully at my drawing you can see it some more, the top of the roof matches that 22 degree tail, same with the sides of the body in plan view. I have Hucho's book on aerodynamics, it's got some greatinfo in it for road going vehicles. Firingorder - Much as the idea of cutting my commute to six minutes and being able to park under a HGV appeals I think there are practical issues associated with driving somthing like that on the road . Can you imagine trying to reach up to the person in the toll booth from that!
Sticking with the Herald, how about a chopped and smoothed out early Bond Equipe? Seems to me they did half the job for you. You could aero one up pretty well. We considered a 356 coupe and not a Speedster, but bodies for those are even more expensive. Not that light either, I´m led to beleive. Chopped and sectioned Bond, with a new nose. Might not be too hard to do. There´s a lot of flat metal on a Herald. No BIVA bullshit to deal with either.
James that photochop is fantastic! That is somthing I'd never have considered, I love it! For good aero, the worst 'fastback' angle is around the 30 degrees mark, the optimum is 12-15 from what I remember. As you increase the angle from 12 degrees, you start to get 'wingtip vortices' peeling off the sides of the car, increasing drag. This problem gets more pronounced until 30-33 degrees, when airflow seperates entirely. This looses the vortices, and drag drops to what it would be for a hatchback (anything from 33 to 90 degress is about the same). So there's an excellent engineering excuse for chopping that Equipe and making it look awsome! Hi Sgtlethargic. The metro engines available to us are mostly MPFI models, so it seems silly not to try and use the injectors. Propane carbs can be had too in the UK but I guess I'd have a little more control with MPFI. Once I'm away from a good old fashioned carb, I might as well go MPFI. Hucho's book has the basis from which the template was created. There's a huuuuuge thread on ecomodders about how it was generated (actually, I think there's three). The book is aimed primarily at road vehicles so there's lots of stuff that's applicable to things like this (I have other aero books for Race car design but I don't usually take them off the shelf for my projects). Agree completely on weight hurting stop/start and aero hurting highway. Even in my around town mpg is only 1/3 of my highway mpg, I do waaaaay under 1/3 of my driving in those circumstances. Even when I am around town, I tend to drive economically. Threading a big ol' Mopar with no power steering/power brakes/handling through British roads is a real good way of learning to think ahead avoid using the brake and accelerator too much. Flooring the loud pedal gets reserved for when I want it , I very rarely actually need to.
Since ecomodders got mentioned, and at the risk of getting my own thread shot down . . . Bare with me here. I've always liked the clean look a lot of LSRs have, and closing up the wheels really helps. I've thought about incorporating front wheel covers like this. Keep them closed whilst driving straight but hinge open when steering. Would let me get a clean front end look, like this:
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