MSNBC this morning has an article titled "A frivolous fashion for fender vents - another automotive ornamentation is set to die away" in which they discuss the developing trend of vents on cars placed there solely for as a frivolous fashion statement. Fake or functional, they are still frivolous and the author believes these will go the way of the vinyl roof after a few years.
Follow the link above for the article.
This topic touches a nerve. I'm a driving enthusiast. That means driving, not posing. That means that form should follow function: everything should contribute to the function of the machine. So fake vents and scoops are particularly useless to me, even offensive. And frivolous vents and scoops make me question their point - even if they do pass some air, how functional are they? If they can't be quantified, then I don't want them. In fact to me they are also offensive.
Here are three well-known examples, in order of least to most-offensive, least-to-most frivolous, but in order of most-to-least "serious drivers machine":
1. The current M3 has 3 functional vents and 1 fake (the fake left hood vent is provided solely for the sake of symmetry). But take a look at this side fender vent - just how much hot air does this actually move? Could you take a look at instrumentation and clearly determine that it drops under hood temperatures 20 degrees, or even 10? And if it did indeed perform any serious heat removal, both heat and carbon monoxide would end up in the side windows and passenger compartment.
At least it's a little more cleanly styled than the plastic side vents of BMW's recent past.
2. Here's an example of a fake scoop on a car that is trying very hard to be serious... but having trouble shedding the baggage of it's past. Yes, folks, the Corvette Z06 hood scoop is a fake - an examination of it easily reveals that. Magazines confirm it, that is when they aren't gushing over the accelerative thrill of the 505 horses or the funny handling at the extremes. To it's credit, the 4 vents/scoops on the sides of the car (engine compartment vent, rear brake cooling scoop) are functional and yes they can be quantified.
What's odd is that fake scoops were never really part of the Corvette scene. Lots of superfluous curves, bumps, pop-up lights, and leaf springs were. We're still stuck with the terrible leaf springs today, inherently variable rate and therefore in my mind the single worst feature of the current car and the leading candidate to be dropped in the upcoming all new "C7" generation. A big question for product planners is whether Corvette traditionalists would have as much of a cow over their demise as they did from the removal of the pop-up headlights in the C6.
What's new to the Corvette scene is a clear transparent window showing the engine inside of the 2009 ZR-1... or at least the flat and featureless top of the intercooler. There is zero technical detail to see thru the window. Nor is the window an original idea: Mazda used it just two years ago in the Kabura (translates to "first sword drawn in battle") concept ( http://www.drivingenthusiast.net/sec-blog/2006/01/08.html#a1165 ). And that window revealed a technically interesting view of the engine below. So the Corvette has the lead in this area now and I predict we'll see any number of transparent panels offered up front in the future, especially from the aftermarket. Of course, rear-engine exotica has offered this trick before which of course offers a truly exotic and worthwhile view to owners and enthusiasts.
3. But here's the worst example of them all - an aftermarket Mustang. You can't possibly add enough fake scoops to a late-model Mustang to satisfy the immature tastes of their owners or (more often) the wanna-bes who dream of a Mustang (when they get old enough to drive). And let me make sure that you understand that I specifically mean late-model Mustangs... the original Mustangs were true enthusiast's machines in ways we've only very rarely seen from Ford since then.
The following example is mild at only 6 fake scoops... there are far worse examples from the aftermarket. Even Ford is happy to sell you 3 fake scoops on the GT (more on the Shelby), taking what might have been a cleanly styled car and ruining it with stuck-on scoops that do absolutely nothing. Perhaps the fake hood scoop brings back memories of the old days when a scoop over the top of a carburetor was (or at least could have been, since even then most weren't) functional?
Why aren't hood scoops functional anymore? Because we don't have carburetors, and we haven't had them since the early eighties. And even when we did, the engine didn't react well to water and snow entering the filter thru large openings. Nor could it efficiently adjust it's fuel metering for the influx of cool - and different - air. So few people back then wanted the daily bother for little gain. A few of the smarter companies eventually offered two under-hood openings to the air cleaner rather than just one - and later connected them to nice cool air inside the fenders for even more gain than a hood scoop ever provided anyway (the scoop-over-carb was likely not where the best airflow was anyway). Properly designed cool air delivery also improves performance and emissions, and the practice continues today in nearly every new car on the market.
As to the other scoops on the example above, well, they are just silly. The roof vents bring back memories of a tiny set of Shelby Mustangs from the sixties where they were actually functional. They opened to release air from inside the car - very useful to evacuate what was probably cigarette smoke and also very useful to evacuate high air pressure at speed.
The lower body-side scoops go back to the original "Mustang 1" concept car of the early sixties, where they delivered air to the rear-mounted engine.
Production Mustangs since then have had fake scoops for most of their years. They might have been useful to deliver air to the rear brakes (drums originally) but they weren't ever truly functional from the factory for that or any other purpose. Sharp owners will remember that the '94-95 Mustangs actually vented air thru the rear fender scoop, near the discs, and the effect might have been quantifiable in a very small way but was dropped in late '95. The fake scoops that after that, all stuck-on, have broken lines which have otherwise become cleaner (again) over the years. And contributed to the developing kid-stuff mania which surrounds the car... making it much less desirable to serious drivers.
And I know that somebody in the Mustang aftermarket is working hard to put a fiberglass hood into production offering the combination of both fake scoops and a ZR-1 type transparent panel. We'll certainly see them well before SEMA next year.
Speaking of SEMA, here's the absolute worst thing I've sever seen. It's reason enough for real enthusiasts to never buy a late-model Mustang ever again. Everything on this monstrosity is fake - even, undoubtedly, the engine under the hood. I completely and totally condemn this POS - and I'm surprised that somebody in 'vegas didn't pull out their chrome-plated Magnum and put it out of it's misery. No matter, the first bump in the road it goes over will knock all the cheap trash off anyway.
This was the worst example, and the most offensive.
So there's my rant for the first business day of the new year. Discuss via comments.
