Evening Star Newspaper, January 17, 1932, Page 71

Hence Will Go Twice \*‘ as Far on a Gallon of Gasoline as Today’s Car, Weigh Only Half as Much and in Streamline Design Will Be . THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JANUARY 17, 1932. More Graceful and Easier Riding, Predicts Automobile Expert BY GEORGE BECK. T FHIS season of the year, when automobile shows occupy the inter- est of the Nation’s motorists and glittering new models stir envy in the hearts of automobile owners, a look into the future reveals a revo- futionary type of automobile—one which ogks like a teardrop and resembles the car of hedsy in about the same degree today’s car resembles the cumbersome vehicles which trekked west- ward with the forty-niners, This new car will be the fully streamlined motor car, a product now in the experimental shop stage, but des- tined to make its formal appearance before another decade has passed. This newest automobile will not be merely a novelty. It will not only please the eye and satisfy the motorist’s craving for something new and something stylish, but it also will be an engineering accomplishment. It will go twice as far on a gallon of gasoline as today’'s ecar. It will weigh about one-half as much as today’s car. It will have a lower center of gravity. Its wheels will be independently sprung. It will be fast, economical, powerful, beautifully and radically different—truly a rev- olutionary product. This is not the dream of a long-haired, wild-eyed inventive genius, but the sound prophecy of one of the Nation's foremost body designers and a pioneer in this new art of sutomotive streamlining, J. Ledwinka, a Phila- delphia automotive engineer with a long record of practical accomplishments to his credit. THLS eminent automotive authority knows his automobile. In common with automotive engineers the country over, he appreciatqg, that today's motor car is a truly cumbersome vehicle, not unlike a milk wagon in its design and fmpractical from many angles. Indeed, if the Nation’s leading automobile engineers’ were to get together tomorrow and, using their com- bined knowledge and the results of their years of experience, were to design and build the fdeal automobile, the product of their inge- nuity would not even look like today’s auto- mobile, Why is this? Isn't today’s motorcar sup- posed to be all that a car should be? Hasn't it four-wheel brakes, balloon tires, automatic starters, all-steel bodies, air-cooled tires, wire wheels, downy seats, elliptical and semi-ellipti- cal springs? Isn't it fast, easy riding, rapidly mecelerated, relatively safe, ]ong lasting and oapable of running for thousands of miles with- out mechanical breakdowns? Let Mr. Led- winka answer these questions. 11 THE modern automobile is a great advance over its counterpart of a decade ago,” says Mr. Ledwinka. “But from an engineering standpoint it lacks much. In the first place, §t is a clumsy, awkward vehicle. It offers almost a. maximum amount of resistance to wind. It is unnecessarily high. It is too heavy. #t costs too much to operate. Its unsprung weight is too great. It needs refining, perfect- tng, improving, and what is being done today in this regard behind the scenes of the automo- bie industry will be reflected in the cars which poll off the assembly lines a few years hence.” To the layman, streamlining may seem to be &n unimportant subject, Mr. Ledwinka points out. Actually, it is one of the most important factors in the industry today. The modern car suffers from its lack. The popular concep- tion is that the wall of wind against which a moving car hurls itself is the chief factor of wind resistance against which it must contend- Quite the contrary is true. The drag at the rear of the car is what retards it most. This drag is caused by wind currents rushing over the top of the automobile and being so deflected at the rear as to pull the car back, thus lessening its speeds and making necessary the use of additional power to offset this de- terring force. At the same time, these cur- rents of wind have the effect of lifting the car from the road and other currents beneath the body aid in this by a tendency to push the car from the road. The problem, then, is not so much to reduce the effects of “headwinds” as it is so to deflect the headwinds in their course that they offer a minimum resistance to the progress of the moving vehicle. Engineers appreciate the tremendous resis- tance of wind against a moving body. They know that at 30 to 60 miles per hour a prop- erly shaped body will travel through the air with one-third the resistance of an improperly shaped body. They have conducted tests, made analyses and studies which have proved that air resistance is the greatest part of the total resistance, so that cars will be made consid- erably faster at touring speeds without increas- ing the size or the horsepower of their engines. This new science of streamlining is the answer to these problems. The automobile, which now offers so much resistance to wind, will be so arranged as to present an absolute minimum resistance. This, in turn, has called for a redesigning of the entire motor car. The engineers, in developing this new design, found that the teardrop in its general shape offers a minimum amount of resistance to wind. Therefore, they fashioned their initial stream- lined models after the teardrop. This new car will be oval-shaped. Air cur- rents will pass over it easily, smoothly, and with small effect will go on their way. There will be no tugging of wind at the rear of these cars, no pulling at the top and no pushing at the bottom. Such is the basic design of the teardrop, streamlined car. But streamlining does ngt end here. The various parts of the car cannot be permitted to act as obstructions to its prog- ress. Parts such as headlights or cowl lights, which jut out from the body, bumpers or large hub caps or other parts which either offer a resistance to the wind or which serve to create little eddies and gusts of wind, which retard the smooth progress of the car as a whole, will be recessed and in some cases individually streamlined. The projecting rear tire, for ex- ample, must find another resting place, as must the headlights, sun visor and the spare tires in fender wells. So much for the cause. fects of streamlining. Now for the ef- rvwflEN we have L’xe fully streamlined car ve will have a truly efficient auto- mobile,” Mr. Ledwinka says. “First, it will be a more beautiful car because the teardrop de- sign will lend itself to a more harmonious treatment; it will be more graceful, smoother in its lines and express more powerfully the L2 7z i - . - == idea of rhythm and grace, rather than of bulk and power. “Secondly, the streamlined car will be a much lighter car. As it is today, & car must be heavier than otherwise necessary in order to hold the road. “A five-passenger car of today which weighs 2,900 pounds can be turned out fully stream- lined to weigh only 1,600 pounds. The stream- lined car will have a very low center of gravity. It will not have so great & road clearance and will hug the ground more closely. And be- cause it will not be susceptible to currents of air which serve to lift it off the road, it will not require great weight to hold the roaed. This factor alone is of great import, as it means engine builders will be able to employ lighter and more practical metals and turn out light, efficient and economical engines. “This question of weight is also important from the safety angle. Today cars travel at high speeds and with their great weight are difficult to stop quickly. Free wheeling has also placed heavy demands upon braking sys- tems. With lighter cars, brakes will operate more efficiently and riding will be safer than ever. Obviously, it is much easier to stop a car weighing 1,500 pounds than it is to brake a 3,000-pound car. “And then there is e question of fuel con- sumption. Frankly, won't be felt at speeds under 35 or 40 miles per hour, because stream- lining does not really take maximum effect until this speed is reached. But today, when motorists roll along fine, wide highways at speeds of 50, 60 or 70 miles per hour, this is important. At touring speeds streamlining will cut fuel consumption in half and it will not be uncommon to obtain 25 or 30 miles on a gallon of gas.” ODAY we live in an age of speed, and auto- mobile speeds are being increased con- stantly. The modern car, even in the low- priced class, is capable of speeds of 60 or 70 miles per hour, and with the advent of super- highways and the lifting of speed restrictions by the various States, speed, with economy of fuel consumption, will be even more de- sirable, and this happy combination is pos =\ : Q\ii//i/ =nin_-R r))ul.«',.uc.l‘.m'v“"' N o TV | el b et L canvemah ./" The modern automobils is a great advance over its counterpart of a deos ade ago, but from the eme gineering standpoint 8 tacks much. It is clumsy and not unlike a milk wag- on, is unnecessarily high, too heavy and costs too much to operate. In the not too distant future you will see radical changes in body designs, says noted engineer. sible only in streamlined automobiles. In the conventional design the air or wind resistance is too great to permit a car to travel at high speeds without consuming large amounts of fuel. Thus, streamlining will cut down operating costs. And in still another way will this be true. Today the heavy, powerful automobile requires heavy tires. The heavier the car the greater wear on the tires. Tires wear because they generate heat when they flex, and heat is the enemy of rubber. This is so well recog- nized that one company has even introduced an air-cooled tire. The heavier the car the greater the amount of flexing of the tire. The lighter, streamlined car will impose a much less severe strain upon tires and is bound to induce longer tire life. At the same time, & streamlined car, because it is lighter, will be easier to start, minimizing the drain the starter imposes upon the battery. Batterles in streams- lined cars should last longer. “In any casual consideration of streamlining the layman is inclined to think it is a good idea but not important,” Mr. Ledwinka points out. “That is because he does not recognize the multiple benefits it will achieve nor does he realize the many deficiencies of the con- ventional car from an engineering standpoint. “Just take the case of independent springing of wheels. In today’s car the wheels are not sprung independently. Thus, if the right-front wheel goes over & bad bump, the shock of that bump is transmitted to the entire car. In the streamlined car each wheel will be independ- ently sprung and the shocks or road bumps suffered by any one wheel will be felt only in the local area governed by one wheel. This means that the streamlined car will add much to riding comfort.” TH! public knows little of this new science, and what little it does know is a result largely of the stressing of the importance of streamlining in aviation, Some of the in- stances in which aviation has employed stream- lining are very interesting and reveal graphic- ally the benefits achieved in this industry through the scientific adoption of stream- lining. For example, when Pangborn and Herndon left Japan on their record-breaking trans- pacific flight, the newspapers announced that they planned to rid their plane of its landing gear once they were well under way. The de- creased wind resistance due to the elimination of this gear not only promised to result in & considerablé” weight decrease, but would reduce air resistance by 17 per cent and accelerate the progress of the plane. This was done, and undoubtedly played an important part in these two intrepid fiyers ultimately reaching their goal. In any consideration of the problem of streamlining one must necessarily con;ider the general public’s reluctance to adopt radically new types of motor cars. If the streamline car is so desirable and so efficient and if the en- gineers who are responsible for building our automobiles not only know this, but know as well how to build streamlined cars, why have they not made their appearance on our streets and highways? This is & fair question. The public will not buy automobiles which are radical de- partures from the conventional car. As & consequence, the industry has been changing current models gradually and the trend has been toward the teardrop, fully streamlined. Each year automobiles have been built a little lower, slightly more streamlined. Thus, when the fully streamlined, teardrop car does make its appearance the public will have been grad- ually accustomed to it. This leads to another conclusion and another probable result of the advent of this most interesting automotive = development. The streamlined car may conceivably do much to restore the automotive industrygto the high position it occupied in the American industrial scheme several years ago—a position from which it has somewhat receded. The streamlined car will make all cars ob- solete. It will make every conventional car out of style, a back number. (Copyright, 1932.)