The Vacuum Car is the Breakthrough That Just Keeps Breaking
[Staff, 2023-01-20 13:11:19,
The distant wail of an electric motor cuts through the ambient hum. There’s a shhh-whoosh of moving air, and a sports car the size of a Victorian eyeglass case rockets past the grandstands at something like Mach 8. The crowd erupts in oohs and aahs and incredulous laughter. What the hell was that?
This story originally appeared in Volume 14 of Road & Track.
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On a nearby video wall, cameras track the McMurtry Spéirling as it shoots up the 11th Duke of Richmond’s driveway. On the screen, it looks over-fast and under-scaled, like a Micro Machines toy. Dust swirls as it jukes through Molecomb Corner, the Goodwood Hillclimb’s perilous 90-degree left-hander, fixed to the ground as if by magic. For the Spéirling, that magic is fan aerodynamics.
Fan cars are a motorsport engineering breakthrough that keeps trying to break through. The concept is simple and effective, like a hovercraft in reverse: Surround the bottom of a car with movable skirts, creating a plenum chamber that holds its seal at high speeds while traveling over tarmac and curbing, then install a…
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