Let's be honest - again - unless you are going to go mad on public roads, spoilers are cosmetic only [and bad ones - usually after-fitted - look ghastly!!]

Should Be A Heated One For When Your Pushin It

No way!

A major reason why I'd never buy a VRs is the boy-racer spoiler; totally takes away the cool Q car effect. A Golf GTi is so much more tidy in this respect.

FYI, it serves no useful purpose on the car except to add to your fuel consumption and have people laugh at your immaturity.

No way!

A major reason why I'd never buy a VRs is the boy-racer spoiler; totally takes away the cool Q car effect. A Golf GTi is so much more tidy in this respect.

FYI, it serves no useful purpose on the car except to add to your fuel consumption and have people laugh at your immaturity.

Buy the estate, then - no spoiler there...

FYI, it serves no useful purpose on the car except to add to your fuel consumption and have people laugh at your immaturity.

and a GTi badge & alloy wheels do serve a purpose ????

Badge no - alloys, well yes, I think so. Supposed to be better to have the least unsprung weight, and very few steel wheels have any visual appeal.

and a GTi badge & alloy wheels do serve a purpose ????

Actually no they don't, and this was not being suggested.

Spoilers, especially the design on Skodas are definitely cosmetic (and not to my taste), and boy-racers are always happy to suffer a marginal (possibly negligible with these spoilers) fuel consumption drop to send a signal to other boy-racers. I always chuckle at the oiks who pay a lot of money to turn their cars into Sopwith Camel style disasters.

As for any notion of downforce, this is a joke on a fairly prosaic road car; look at the wing area and profile, check an aero-design book and make a guess at much downforce you actually get (not much - and as the spoiler gets bigger, so does the drag).

As for the comment on affecting speed or acceleration, more drag affects both at speed, obviously - it's straight-up Newton, but then because the spoiler is cosmetic only, there is probably no effect.

Badges - I used to remove badges, since where I come from a badge indicating a vehicle with go-faster pretensions is the first to get vandalized. Anyway being loud about your car's provenance is just so down-market. Interestingly, in the UK, people who buy BMW or Mercs more usually get the badges removed on the small engine, bottom of the range cars (isn't it usually a 318i up your tail, pro-rata, rather than an M3?), but in Germany the opposite is true. Sad git UK car drivers!

As for alloys, they generally add a lot to the cosmetic appeal of a car (to my eye for sure), but in terms of handling you'd never know the difference compared with steels. You have to spend serious money on specialist mag alloys and tyres before you'd be able to significantly reduce unsprung mass or rotational inertia on a road car (which is the original racing need of alloys). Try putting a few on the scales, and then check the serious iron the makes up your suspension - see ? doesn't work out that well, does it?

Steve

Spoilers, especially the design on Skodas are definitely cosmetic

I doubt that this is :eek:

see - eBay.co.uk: SKODA OCTAVIA WRC REAR SPOILER (Carbon/Kevlar) (item 220063052627 end time 29-Dec-06 21:45:00 GMT)

I doubt that this is :eek:

see - eBay.co.uk: SKODA OCTAVIA WRC REAR SPOILER (Carbon/Kevlar) (item 220063052627 end time 29-Dec-06 21:45:00 GMT)

Fantastic! Does it come with any special medication?

How much extra CO2 would the car emit by having to drag this along?

Can it be fitted to my nephew's tricycle?

Is is made by magimix? - I can't wait to see some julienne'd pedestrians having passed through it.

[ yes I spotted the WRC bit! ]

It's MFI isn't it? I've got a couple of their bookshelves.

Spoilers, especially the design on Skodas are definitely cosmetic (and not to my taste)

This is *probably* true but do you know this to be fact?

Remember the original TT chucking people off the road at 100+mph and the subsequent spoiler retrofit? Form over function going very wrong there.

Maybe once you start pushing max speed in a vRS (which is higher than the other models in the range) it needs a little help keeping the rear down?

Either way, I think the spoiler on the hatch is little enough so as to be inoffensive. You are obviously not in the "GTi" demographic - one of the criticisms of the vRS when compared to it's competitors is that it is too conservative. Like it or not, part of the hot-hatch appeal is in making shopping trolleys look more aggressive. It goes across the board - BMW Ms, Audi RS - in a lot of cases I bet it's how they look that influences a purchase decision, not how amazing they are on the limit.

There was a similar discussion on Corrado-net the other week, regarding the pop up spoiler. One of the guys there ran a quick CFD analysis on the car shape, and showed the lift generated by a car at speed. Anyway, to cut a long story short, a spoiler if just that.........it 'spoils' air slow over the rear of the car, disrupting air flow and reducing lift. It does not generate downforce as such. A well designed spoiler may also serve to keep the rear screen clean, as somone mentioned, and by improving air flow and reducing eddy currents can even slightly increase efficiency. It does need to be well designed though. The sort of thing you sometimes see on Corsas, that look they were nicked from Boeing are almost certainly just large air breaks.

Phil

The spoiler was "invented" by Richie Ginther way back about 1963 I think. The current Ferrari sports car had proved to be nearly uncontrollable. I think this was on the banking at Monza or somewhere similar. They cut a strip of alloy sheet and pop riveted it to the tail of the car - dramatic improvement, but only noticed at speed.

The spoiler was "invented" by Richie Ginther way back about 1963 I think. The current Ferrari sports car had proved to be nearly uncontrollable. I think this was on the banking at Monza or somewhere similar. They cut a strip of alloy sheet and pop riveted it to the tail of the car - dramatic improvement, but only noticed at speed.

Interesting "spoiler" facts!!!

Checked my little book and it turns out to be the 1961 256SP they first fitted it to, and it was at Monza. The tail was lifting on the banked curves, and the alloy strip pushed the back end down firmer.

A octy vRS without the spoiler would just look wrong as it completes the 'sports' look.

Same goes for the little spoiler on the Fabia vRS.

On the estate well it would heavily depend on the shape of it and how well it fits with the lines of the car.

As for the spoiler on the octy vrs increasing drag well the difference with it on and then off would be so minimal it would be pointless measuring.

IMHO the spoiler is a statement! It needs one to set it apart from the drosssss.

Generally I'd agree - but on an estate car????

Generally I'd agree - but on an estate car????

To me combi looks better than the hatch and it suits my needs better