[Vwdiesel] Why gasss cars mpg sucks

[Val Christian]

>   I remember Jake's comment once on the aerodynamics of a Rabbit...
> "...the aerodynamics of a flying brick!"  I found it sadly amusing.  ;-)
>      Loren

In the early 80's there was a Scientific American article on efficient 
vehicles.  It turns out that the Rabbit was aerodynamically pretty good.
Sure there were some high end cars which were better, but they were
sports cars, and had even less room, and in general much poorer economy.
The rolling resistance of the Rabbit compared even better, probably due to
narrower tires.

NASA also had a Tech Brief, which I don't own a copy of, which compared
the aerodynamics and rolling losses of about 25 vehicles.  

There are some other papers around which show measurement or analysis
of vehcile loss properties, and characterizations of their powerplant
efficiencies.

The data suggests that if a Rabbit is a flying brick, then there are
many more cars which are rolling drouge chutes.  

Val

ps: The frontal RCS (radar cross section) of a Rabbit is notably low.  Boxes are
better than curves.