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jonny
Today's bike ride threw up an amazing condition 1985 Citroen CX25 GTi Turbo.
When I got home I fell down a rabbit hole, and discovered the Citroen above is the exact car that featured in a Tyrrell's Classic Workshop vid on Youtube back in April.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMh1AlIbbs4&t=640s
The side profile looks so aerodynamic for the 80's...
....but according to the Tyrell vid not as slippery through the air as an Audi 100 from the same era which to my eye looks much more of a brick.
The CdA of the Citroen was 0.36 compared to the Audi's 0.3 according to Mr Tyrell, which is still pretty good today. Those flush windows on the Audi helped and has been widely copied since. Mr Tyrell also explains the meaning of the Citroen double chevron logo, which was news to me.
I then stumbled further into the abyss. The Audi was apparently the first car designed using 'shape optimisation', which I discovered from this lovely retro Belgium Uni Powerpoint presentation. I remember the pre-Powerpoint era, so I read this while imagining some spotty spod slowly winding a squeaking overhead projector in an echoey lecture theatre while dying a thousand slow deaths.
http://www.ltas-aea.ulg.ac.be/cms/uploads/VehicleAerodynamics02.pdf
I glazed over a bit before the techy stuff at the end, but there's some impressive vehicles in there I'd not seen before, such as the BMW Kamm Coupe and the Alfa Romeo Ricotti. The latter looks a total death trap and at its top speed of 135kph must have been terrifying. After seeing it I could not un-see the phrase 'many dead in mangled wreckage'.
And from cars that aim to slice through the air with as little resistance as possible, to my other spot of the day which bluntly sledgehammers the air in the face. Spotted in Shoreditch is this the most Mad Max over the top grill and bumper ever fitted to a production car? Its ridiculous but I still love it, and considering its now 67 years old, its still looking mighty fine. Behold the behemoth that is the 1953 Cadillac Coupe DeVille.
