[Chate]

You know, you're minding your own business walking along and you see this REALLY hot girl a few yards away.
You speed up, only to catch up, take a closer look and subsequently slow down again.

Sir, what you have experienced is what we call "good from far, far from good" syndrome in the medical community. I present to you a similar case:
Front view, sexy...




Side view, "oh dear jesus, wtf have you done"....



No, thats not photoshopped...see below

http://jalopnik.com/5105964/six+whee...-to-production

[BADDASSC6]

Epic automotive Failure!

[Vettezuki]

There was an F1 car from the 70s that successfully employed a similar setup believe it or not. I want to say Tyroll or something like that. Anyway, not pretty.

[gsteichen]

Originally Posted by Vettezuki

There was an F1 car from the 70s that successfully employed a similar setup believe it or not. I want to say Tyroll or something like that. Anyway, not pretty.

No amount of performance gain could make that thing pretty!

Thanks for reminding me of the Tyrell F-1 car.

YouTube - Onboard Tyrrell P34 (6 wheels f1 car)

Wierdest thing I've ever seen raced with the exception of the Chapparrel Can-Am car (70's???) that had fans to suck the air out from under the car, producing downforce without drag???

[BADDASSC6]

You are absolutely right there was a car in the 70's that had this set up. It was an open wheel racer. The tires contribute a significant portion of the aerodynamic resistance on those types of race cars. The concept was to have two smaller tires that gave you a larger contact patch and resulted in a smaller frontal area. Unfortunately, this car is not an open wheel racer, the tires are covered, and the designers were stupid. This is a prime example where the term "keep it simple stupid" would apply. Kinda like having AWD on a car with less than 400whp in southern California. Yeah it sounds cool, but it's really just dead wieght (even better it's rotational mass).

Here is an example: F1 transmission used to be made of Magnisium, but now carbon fiber. The carbon fiber tranny cost 1 million dollars to produce (i.e. price for ferrari not to buy). Prior to the cabon fiber that cars had to be loaded with ballast to any wieght gain is completely void since more ballast would hve to be added. The large gain is that since carbon fiber doesn't get soft like magnisium at higher temperatures the carbon fiber transmission could be allowed to run much hotter. This means that smaller heat exchangers could be used in hte side pods and the pods themselves could be reduced in size. This resulted in a smaller frotnal area and a pick up of "Several" miles and hour.