At first As of 2023, the good folks at University College London’s Department of Experimental Psychology surveyed 200 men between the ages of 18 and 74, and supposedly scientifically discovered what we all already knew: men who drive fast cars probably have small penises.
To be more precise, the authors stated that there was “a casual psychological link between fast cars and small penises.” The idea, according to his article, is that men who believe They are somehow lacking in the pants department and are more likely to rush to buy, say, a Porsche 911 or a Ferrari.
It gets worse for older gentlemen. The experiment, which has not yet undergone peer review, found that “men over the age of 30 in particular rated sports cars as more desirable when made to feel like they had a small penis.”
One suspects that the academics could hear the cries of “What a surprise!even before they finished their study.
Unfortunately, car design remains almost exclusively a male space. But now, fortunately, the nature of electric vehicles And the need for slick, range-extending aerodynamics has at least begun to shift new car shapes away from todger offset tropes like power bulges, aggressive flanks and ridiculous spoilers, instead bringing more subtle lines and aerodynamics. It’s true that the bad examples that follow this new path have more than a “mold’s jelly” smell about them (we’re looking at you mercedes eqs), but when done right you get something like the Ioniq 6.
Not a jelly bean in sight
When Hyundai revealed the Ioniq 6 in 2022SangYup Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of Hyundai Global Design Center, referred to the car’s sweeping silhouette as “Aerodynamic typology,” citing the penchant for streamlined automotive design in the 1930s and 1940s.
The 6’s efficient single-turn profile gives it a drag coefficient of just 0.21, just shy of the 0.20 claimed by the aforementioned EQS, currently the world’s most aerodynamic car. But here’s the point: I’d trade that paltry 0.01 lead from the boring Mercedes for the much more considered design of the Ioniq 6 any day. Here, Hyundai proves that smart, aerocentric design can be attractive, from any angle. Others seem to agree. At the 2023 World Car Awards, all 6 took home Design of the Year, Electric Vehicle of the Year and Overall Car of the Year.
Despite this impressive lack of stamina, which reportedly helps propel the Ioniq 6 up to 361 miles on a single charge in the long-range version, Simon Loasby, vice president and director of Hyundai Style Group, wanted more. “We were desperately trying to find solutions to get to the best drag we could in the early days. I made myself a T-shirt that said ‘0.1x’, because I wanted to reach less than 0.2 as a goal. We didn’t, of course. But if getting 0.21 is a flop, then I’m happy with that flop,” he says.
“One of the tricks we came up with was a very simple solution,” says Loasby. “Knowing that we have a short front overhang, it’s difficult to connect the airflow to the sides of the car. So we filled the space in front of the front wheel by 25 millimeters, narrowing it down, so there’s less turbulence around that front wheel. That gave us the last few counts we needed to go down to 0.21. I had never seen it in any car before, never tried it before.”
Another design example that encourages incremental aero gains comes from Hyundai’s head of aerodynamics who, when looking at the actual wing, realized they should ditch a straight shape and instead model the 6 on the Spitfire Supermarine wing, but improve it by adding ailerons down on the ends. “Closing the gap between this wing and the body surface prevents a vortex from forming. The vortex puts energy into the wind, and this means the car loses energy,” says Loasby. “We’d love it to be an up-and-down spoiler, but that’s more weight and more cost.”
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