It is essential for today’s sports car to have excellent aerodynamic characteristics and a sophisticated style. These factors are dependent and often inconsistent with each other. It is desirable that they are integrated rather than compromised in such cases.
In the early stages of development of the 280ZX, we thoroughly investigated the relationship between a style and its aerodynamic characteristics. A three-dimensional smoke tunnel and a 1/5-scale model was used for this purpose.
Several improvements were examined mainly on the front end of the model, which strongly affect both aerodynamic characteristics and styling, such as the hood, bumper, chin spoiler, engine-compartment opening and others.
The resultant values of the principal aerodynamic coefficients of the realized 280ZX are CD=0.385, CLF=0.11 and CYM=0.04 (CD and CLF at a yaw angle of 0 degree and CYM at 10 degrees).
In addition to the above-mentioned aerodynamic characteristics, wind noise, ventilation efficiency and engine-compartment cooling performance were also developed.