Jalopnik
Pictured is Anne-C cile Rose-Itier, the first woman to race at Le Mans, standing next to her sexy Adler Trumpf Le Mans racecar. At a time when all cars looked like old cars, Deutschland's Adler was peering into the future and creating automobiles with drag coefficients as low as 0.23. For comparison's sake, a Toyota Prius sports a drag coefficient of 0.26. Not pictured for copyright reasons is the most stunning of all the Adler Streamliners, the Trumpf Rennwagon. But if you click the link, photographer Michael Zumbrunn has photographed one of the most dramatic vehicles from the design high watermark 1930s. Note the twin windows on the door. This is what you had to do in the time before curved glass. The third headlight is cool, too.
1937 Adler Trumpf Rennwagen [Michael Zumbrunn]
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Comments
Drag coefficient is effectively meaningless unless you factor in frontal area, which that (unfortunately named) car appears to have in excess.
yeah, but that chubby frontal area is pretty.
The copyrighted material after the jump features a car with a tragically formed nose end. gah.
Another very interesting car is the 1923 Benz Tropfenwagen (Teardrop). Designed by Ferdinand Porsche, it was the first mid-engined, rear wheel driven race car. Even more spectacular for its time were probably the aerodynamic advancements though. I don't know the drag coefficient, but it looks quite low. But have a look for yourselves:
http://www.seriouswheels.com/pics-abc/Benz-Teardrop-S-1280...
http://www.seriouswheels.com/pics-abc/Benz-Teardrop-Track-...
imoody,
To be fair, all the streamliners had drag coefficients ranging frmo 0.23 to 0.30 -- I think it was the "tragically formed nose" of the Rennwagen that was the ultra low one, not the racer.
An aside: The two-window arrangement is the only way they could make the window open. There's no where for it to roll down into (and a simple slide is a lot lighter that a crank mechanism).
This arrangement is still used in lots of really cheap (or really light) cars; they were even, for about 30 or 40 seconds, contemplating the same arrangement for the recent Ford GT.
as usual, there is another spelling error on jalopnik. is it adler or alder? at least other sites pick one wrong spelling and go with it. do you people suffer from dickslicksia?
Did they run that Rennwagen on the Avus oval (the one with 43-degree banked turns)? How fast did it go there...and how long did its tires last?
A lot of old cars have had their Cd trumped up by revisionists. Look at all the shit sticking up from the surface on this thing- hood straps, window trim, headlights, etc. I would be fairly surprised if this honestly measured at .26 using present day equipment. And of course, it likely generates several hundreds of pounds of lift. It certainly is hott though.
If it's prior to curved glass then how did they curve the windshield like that? I concur that the two pane system is for paying tolls.
@benztown: In reference to the Tropfenwagen racing car of 1923, the design is attributed to Dr. Edmund Rumpler. Ferdinand Porsche did the Auto Union V-16 20 years later. The Tropfenwagen, unlike the Auto Union, did poorly on the tracks. Both cars, however, were fantastic and highly innovative.
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