34 aerodynamic classic cars

Wind-cheating classics

In the earliest days of motoring, very little attention was paid to aerodynamics. There were more pressing matters to consider, like making sure the car would go and stop when – and only when – it was asked to.

How a vehicle managed the air around it became important in racing and record breaking shortly afterwards, but it wasn’t until after the First World War, during which aerodynamics suddenly became something worth taking seriously, that manufacturers of road cars began to consider the subject.

Today, of course, aerodynamic design is extremely important, since it’s now well understood how it can affect performance, fuel economy and emissions.

So how did we get here? To illustrate that, we’ll take a look at 34 aerodynamic production cars which went on sale during the 20th century.

1. Rumpler Tropfenwagen

From what has been written in the past, you might think that people had to wait until the 1930s before they could buy a wind-cheating car. Anything built before that was a prototype of some sort, such as the amazing pre-war Alfa 40/60hp Aerodinamica or the incredible vehicles devised by Paul Jaray in the 1920s.

This is partly true, but it ignores the Rumpler Tropfenwagen, which went into limited production in 1921.

The Tropfenwagen was outstanding in that its body consisted almost entirely of curved surfaces (including, incredibly for the time, the windows) which air could slip round rather than crashing into flat ones.

Curved surfaces would become increasingly important as the decades passed, but no other manufacturer has dared to use them in a car sold to the public in quite the way Rumpler did.

2. Chrysler Airflow

Several cars launched in 1934 are given credit for being the first streamlined models to go into production, usually by people who don’t know about the Rumpler Tropfenwagen.

One of the main contenders is the Chrysler Airflow, which had many of the styling details common in its era but also featured plenty of curves and a swooping, rather than vertical, nose.

Americans weren’t quite ready for this thing, and the Airflow bombed in the marketplace. Chrysler did not produce anything as visually bold again until well after the Second World War.

Much the same car, but with less equipment, was marketed as the De Soto Airflow. This one was canned in 1936, a year before production of the Chrysler was abandoned.

3. Crossley Streamline

Streamline Cars was created to manufacture an extraordinary rear-engined machine designed by Sir Dennistoun Burney. Already known for designing airships, Burney devised a very aerodynamic body with a tilted snub nose and a long, swooping roofline.

These cars were all prototypes and not intended for public sale, though the then Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) bought one in 1930.

The patent was sold to Crossley Motors, which revised the design, creating a much more conventional front with a vertical radiator and two large headlights, but otherwise retained more or less the same profile.

Crossley’s version – sometimes known as the Crossley-Burney but officially named Crossley Streamline – made its debut at the 1934 Olympia Show, and found a very small number of customers during its short production run.

4. Tatra 77

Designed partly by the brilliant Paul Jaray, the Tatra 77 was yet another aerodynamic car to appear in 1934.

A very curvy nose was the foremost part of a profile which closely resembled that of the Crossley Streamline. Both cars also had their engines mounted in the rear.

The 77 was quickly developed into the 77a, which was in turn replaced by the similarly swoopy 78. Tatra continued to build cars of this type well into the 1970s.

5. Lincoln Zephyr

Late in 1935, Lincoln introduced a new model which would have seemed radical if it hadn’t been preceded by the remarkable cars launched the previous year.

The Zephyr was light, and powered by a strong 4.4-litre V12 engine.

These factors would have made it noteworthy enough, but it was also impressively aerodynamic, with integral headlights and a sense that every edge and surface had been rounded off during the design stage.

6. Peugeot 402

Launched in 1935, the 402 was the first Peugeot with a styling feature which other manufacturers shied away from copying.

Both headlights were mounted behind the radiator grille, which meant they caused almost no disturbance to the oncoming air. No other car of the time looked quite like it.

The 402 also had enclosed rear wheels, a less unusual arrangement, but still one rarely found on a production car.

Both the concealed headlights and the rear-wheel enclosures were also used on the short-lived 302 and the smaller 202, which remained in production until the late 1940s.

7. Cisitalia 202

Although Cisitalia’s little sports car, fitted mostly with Fiat components including a 1.1-litre engine, is believed to have had a production run of only 170 examples, it was available with several body styles.

One thing they all shared was an abundance of curves. Almost no straight lines disrupted the airflow, a most uncommon thing for a car designed in the mid 1940s.

A Cisitalia 202GT became the first car to go on permanent display in the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1972. It’s still there today.

8. Jowett Javelin

The Javelin, which went into full-scale production in 1947, was notable for its excellent handling, probably because its flat-four engine kept the centre of gravity well down.

This was not immediately obvious to observers, who would be more likely to notice that the Javelin was remarkably aerodynamic for a British car of the time.

The front end was fairly conventional, with a tall bonnet, a very large radiator grille and beefy wings. Other than that, the body was a complex collection of curves, which helped the car slide through the air more easily than rival saloons.

9. Bristol 401

When the Bristol Aeroplane Company diversified into car production in the late 1940s, it was inevitable that its experience of aerodynamics would be transferred over to the new department.

The first Bristol car, the 400 of 1947, was impressively swoopy, but this was taken a stage further in the following year’s 401, on which hardly a straight line could be seen.

It wasn’t just about the overall shape, though. In a fine example of attention to detail, Bristol did away with doorhandles, and instead used flush-fitting buttons which could be pushed to open each door, and created the minimum possible air resistance.

10. Jaguar XK120

The XK120 caused a sensation when it was unveiled at the 1948 London Motor Show.

Unlike any previous Jaguar, it had a tremendously curvaceous body whose aerodynamic efficiency was enhanced by rear-wheel covers, which were fitted to some but not all production XK120s.

The only snag, aerodynamically speaking, was that it was a convertible, but a fixed-head coupé was introduced in 1951.

The later XK140 and XK150 had very similar shapes, though their rear wheels were not enclosed.

11. Porsche 356

The first production car to wear a Porsche badge made its debut in the same year as the Jaguar XK120.

Although it looked less dramatic than the British car, it demonstrated a similar commitment to airflow management, with a curvy front end and a long, sloping tail.

In profile, it looked a little like a flattened Volkswagen Beetle (another Porsche design with perhaps some Tatra influence), but it was far superior aerodynamically.

12. Tucker 48

The story of Preston Tucker’s short-lived attempt to break into the US motor industry could have been made into a film – and indeed was, in 1988, 40 years after his revolutionary rear-engined machine went on sale for a very brief period.

It’s easy to forget, when presented with the drama of the situation, that the Tucker 48 was astonishingly aerodynamic.

The large front wings were characteristic for the late 1940s and would not have helped the airflow very much even though they were beautifully covered.

But the rest of the body was so well designed (by Alex Tremulis, reputedly in just six days) that it slid beautifully through the air all the same.

13. Austin A90 Atlantic

While the Jaguar XK120 grabbed most of the attention at the 1948 London show, the Austin A90 Atlantic ran it close for shock value.

Austin had developed a habit of designing curvy cars in the immediate post-war era, but with the Atlantic it took this to extremes.

Part of the reason for this was that the car was intended to attract attention in the US market, where it was very important – not only for Austin but for the British government – that the car should succeed.

It didn’t. Nearly 8000 Atlantics were built, but US sales are estimated at just 350.

14. Nash Airflyte

Though not as radical as the Tucker, the Nash Airflyte was a surprisingly aerodynamic car for North America in 1949.

Its styling, which included many curves, a fastback roofline, unobtrusive wings and partly enclosed wheels, earned it the nickname ‘inverted bathtub’.

Despite that little jibe, the Airflyte was, as its name suggested, quite the wind-cheater for its time.

Nash backed away from its original policy in 1952, when it transformed the car into the much less dramatic Golden Airflyte.

15. Saab 92

Like Bristol, Saab was an aircraft manufacturer before it began building cars – and it showed.

The astonishing design of the Ursaab prototype was toned down only slightly for the company’s first production car, the 92, which went on sale in late 1949.

The extraordinarily rounded shape of the 92 served Saab well. It was still being used, admittedly with many changes, as late as 1980, when its descendant, the 96, was dropped from the catalogue.

16. Isetta

Yes, at first sight the Isetta seems an odd choice for an article about aerodynamic vehicles. For best management of the air around it, a car should have as little frontal area as possible. The Isetta consisted of almost nothing but frontal area.

But let’s look at this in context. Bubble cars were very short, and exceptionally tall in relation to their length.

Faced with this problem, Iso (which designed and originally marketed the Isetta) did its best to solve it by giving the car rounded edges and a fastback tail.

BMW retained the same basic shape when it took over the Isetta project, but spoiled the airflow by fitting much larger headlights.

17. Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint Speciale

Also known as the SS, the Sprint Speciale was a 1.3-litre sports car which first appeared in prototype form in 1957 and went on sale two years later.

Despite its beauty, its shape was almost entirely functional, and gave the car an aerodynamic efficiency which would become common in production cars until the early 21st century.

The designer responsible was this was Franco Scaglione, who was working for Bertone at the time.

The car turned out to be slower than Alfa Romeo hoped because (unless it was fitted with an aluminium body, which very few were) it was rather heavy, but that wasn’t Scaglione’s fault.

18. Alfa Romeo Giulia

The first Giulia, launched in 1962, looks like a brick compared with the Giulietta Sprint Speciale, and doesn’t seem particularly aerodynamic compared with much else either.

Appearances are, in this case, deceptive. Despite the boxy overall shape, the Giulia had in fact been designed to lead air around itself very efficiently.

Every corner had a large-radius curve, and the same applied to the leading edge of the bonnet, whose sides flowed gently into the wings on either side.

The Giulia may have seemed cumbersome at first glance, but in its way it was a masterpiece of aerodynamic design.

19. Panhard CD

One of the world’s first car manufacturers, Panhard became increasingly interested in aerodynamic design during the 1930s.

This came to a head in 1963, when the CD was launched. It was the roadgoing version of the incredibly slippery CD Dyna which had raced the previous year in the Le Mans 24 Hours.

The road car had partially exposed vertical headlights which must have caused havoc to the air hitting them, but the rest of its shape, including a long, downward-swooping tail, treated the wind far more kindly, and contributed to excellent performance in a car powered by an 848cc engine.

20. NSU Ro80

The Ro80 was a notably advanced car for 1967, with its rotary engine, disc brakes, all-independent suspension and a clutch operated simply by touching the gearlever.

Most people aware of the car know that its engine was famously unreliable, and was not sorted in time to save NSU from being discontinued.

This unfortunate matter puts its impressive technology in the shade. One thing in particular which is not remembered as much as it should be was that it also had very efficient aerodynamics.

Clever details ensured that its apparently straightforward shape carved through the air more smoothly than almost any other mass-production saloon of the 1960s and 1970s.

21. Toyota 2000GT

The 2000GT sports coupé was developed jointly by Toyota and Yamaha and built in very small numbers from 1967 to 1970.

For this era, it was outstandingly aerodynamic, partly because its roof was less than four feet above the ground.

But there was more to it than that. From just a quick glance, it’s clear that Toyota was trying to guide air along the bonnet between the prominent front wings, and then between the rear wings and windows to the fastback rear end.

The fastback ended abruptly, making the 2000GT an example of a car with a Kamm tail, long heralded as an excellent way of managing the air at the back of a road vehicle.

22. Ford Torino Talladega/Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II

The Torino Talladega was a variant of the Torino Cobra Sportsroof (fastback) with a more aerodynamic front end.

It went into very limited production early in 1969. Ford built only slightly more examples than required to allow it to run in NASCAR, where the exceptionally high speeds common on oval tracks could be increased still further with good air management.

All of the above also applies to another Ford product, the Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II.

23. Dodge Charger Daytona/Plymouth Superbird

Aerodynamics is not just about treating oncoming air gently. As any motorsport enthusiast knows, it can also be about downforce.

Chrysler’s response to the Ford Torino Talladega and Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II was to bring downforce to NASCAR. Both the Dodge Charger Daytona (pictured) and the Plymouth Superbird had enormous rear wings, along with far more pointed front ends than either of the Ford specials.

Cars of this type were eventually banned by NASCAR, but not before they were crippled by a rule which stated that they had to run smaller engines than everything else.

24. Citroën GS

The GS was launched in 1970 to plug the considerable gap between Citroën’s two then current models, the 2CV and the very much larger DS.

The DS was already quite aerodynamic (certainly more so than the 2CV) but in this respect it was comfortably exceeded by the GS, which featured an air-friendly nose and a Kamm tail.

Impressively, the GS survived Citroën’s bankruptcy and subsequent rescue by Peugeot in the mid ’70s. It was still being built – and sold as the GSA – as late as 1986.

25. Citroën SM

The other new Citroën of 1970 was the SM, a large coupé with the company’s famous hydropneumatic suspension and a Maserati V6 engine.

This engine was the most powerful fitted in a production Citroën until the 3.0-litre XM came along 20 years later. Naturally, the SM was fast, but that was due almost as much to its shape as much as to its power output.

The exact level of slipperiness achieved by the SM is understood to have been exaggerated in the early days, but it was still impressive for a car of its time.

26. Citroën CX

After introducing two especially aerodynamic models four years earlier, Citroën did it again in 1974.

The CX had a low nose and, in saloon rather than estate form, an almost fish-like profile in which the roofline gradually lowered before coming to a sharp end – another example of the Kamm tail mentioned earlier.

The car is understood to have been less slippery than either the GS or the XM, but for a model which first went on sale in the mid 1970s, it was still pretty good.

27. Renault Fuego

All three of the Citroëns just mentioned were styled by Robert Opron, who also led the design team responsible for rival French company Renault’s Fuego.

On sale from 1980, the Fuego was undramatically attractive. All the drama – apparent only if you studied the figures – was in the aerodynamics. In this department, the Fuego was the most impressive car in a class which included the flat-fronted Ford Capri.

The Fuego was not a particularly big seller, and European production came to an end within six years, but its aerodynamic qualities were beyond question.
 

28. Audi 100

Even more than the Fuego, the Audi 100 of 1982 had a straightforward look which might, slightly unkindly, be described as unimaginative.

Yet it was even more slippery than the Renault. That was largely because the 100, which of course had rounded edges (much more common in the ’80s than in the previous decade), also displayed great attention to detail.

The general policy was to conceal from the air even the smallest items which might disturb it. Flush-fitting windows, for example, were there from the start, and after a few years flush-fitting doorhandles made the 100’s aerodynamics even better.

29. Mercedes-Benz W124

Like the Audi 100, the car which would become known as the first Mercedes E-Class was far more aerodynamic than its conventional appearance might suggest.

Once again, it was all about the details. For example, the W124 (launched two years after the Audi in 1984) had the now common but then unusual feature of an engine undertray, which smoothed out the airflow beneath the car.

Furthermore, its boot tapered very slightly in plan view. This helped the air to recover quickly once the car had passed through it, reducing the turbulence which usually develops behind a boxy car.

30. Ford Taurus

Possibly inspired by the new trend in Europe, including the development of its own Sierra, Ford paid very close attention to the aerodynamics of the first Taurus, launched in 1985.

Notably, the Taurus (like the earlier limited-production Mustang SVO) had no front grille, a decision Audi and Mercedes seem to have felt unable to make for the 100 and W124 respectively.

Where a grille would otherwise have been, there was a curved panel. Air was sent to the engine through a gap above the front bumper.
 

31. Vauxhall/Opel Calibra

The Calibra was the coupé version of the first-generation Opel Vectra, which was the same thing as the third-generation Vauxhall Cavalier.

At its launch in 1989, it was said to be the most aerodynamic production car in the world, though this applied only to versions with the 2.0-litre eight-valve engine and front-wheel drive, which had narrower tyres than the others.

Part of the reason for the Calibra’s aerodynamic efficiency was its rear profile. A long, downward-sloping roofline led to a horizontal ‘bootlid’ (in fact part of a hatchback) which abruptly terminated according to the Kamm principle.

Some versions of the Vectra/Cavalier had a similar arrangement, but GM Europe took the idea much further in the Calibra.

32. GM EV1

Although Citroën had an electric version of the AX on sale slightly earlier, the GM EV1 manufactured from 1996 was designed from the start to run entirely on batteries.

Then as now, aerodynamics played a major role in cars of this type. Any disturbance to the airflow risked reducing the range, which was a big problem when electric vehicles could rarely travel 100 miles from one full recharge to the next.

General Motors threw everything at the problem. The EV1 was astonishingly slippery, thanks to its smooth curves, almost disc-like wheels (partly concealed at the rear) and flush-fitting glass and doorhandles.

33. Audi A2

The A2 supermini was launched in 1999 and almost immediately developed a reputation (enhanced by the later adoption of diesel engines) for being exceptionally economical.

Aluminium construction, and corresponding lack of weight, played a big part in this, but so did the aerodynamic efficiency of its body.

A steeply sloped bonnet led the air over a windscreen and roof which were about as optimal as could be imagined for a short car designed to accommodate tall passengers.

The roofline ended sharply at an almost vertical tailgate. This gave a similar effect to a Kamm tail, though a longer roof with a lower cut-off would, at the risk of worse rear visibility, have followed Kamm theory more closely.

34. Honda Insight

Of the two Japanese petrol-electric hybrids launched in the late 1990s, the Toyota Prius came first, but the Honda Insight was more obviously the result of more aerodynamic development.

Its shape was broadly similar to that of the GM EV1, with almost completely hidden rear wheels, and a long, gently sloped roof and a distinctly Kamm-inspired back end which was considerably narrower than the front.

It also used aluminium construction, which made it rather expensive. Production lasted until 2006, and there was then a small gap before the launch of the very different (but still hybrid) second-generation Insight.