Ferrari began to incorporate aerodynamic enhancements to the underbody of their "passenger cars" starting with the F355. The smooth underbody along with venturis is what is causing the car to have downforce. But this has little to do with how much the actual underbody pieces cost. It has more to with the commitment of the car manufacturer to engineer such a design, having the techknowledge know-how and the budget to design, test and implement it.(And yes, I do understand that this would increase the overall budget of the development of the car.)

Read my post above. To me, Ferrari 355, at its introduction is 1995, represent the pinnancle of sports car design in terms of aerodynamics. It has achieved a reasonably low coefficient of drag and at the same time, a downforce inducing body. I hate to sound like a Ferrari fanatic, but the more I think of it, the aerodynamics of the F355 is a quantumn leap forward in "passenger car" design.

I agree that Mada engineers are not dumb. I think they did a fabulous job with the FD3S. Otherwise, I would not have owned it for 12+ years.
But the top speed of the car is 150 MPH plus. And the single goal of Mazda for the FD3S was to build a no-compromise sports car. I think they have done an admirable job. However, it's not perfect and there is room for improvement.

I agree. But as a somewhat-informed weekend warrior of a racer, I would like to know what really went into the design of these aftermarket parts. But alas, there is paucity of data regarding proof of testing and data.


I commend you for even thinking about doing this...since I have neither the skills or the tools to do this.

Ed

 

Not necessarily on a race car. On high speed circuits like Suzuka, Silverstone, Elkhart Lake, etc., as well as the oval tracks, there is usually a tradeoff between cornering grip and straight speed. You could dial in a ton of downforce and literally rail through the corners flat, but your tires and engine would be working overtime, and less powerful cars would be passing you down the straights, or even eventually pass you through the corners after your tires are shot. This is why wings and other external downforce components are adjustable.

You fail to mention that the F355 will need increasingly more horsepower as that speed increases, due to the downforce-induced drag. Which is why it needs a very expensively developed 3.5L V8 screaming at 8500 rpm to power it.

As was stated before, if Mazda had an army of engineers with a nearly unlimited budget to design a sports car that was going to sticker over $120K, then they surely would've pulled out all the stops. While I'm always impressed with Ferrari's innovative engineering, I'm not any less impressed with what Mazda engineers did within the constraints they were shackled with.

 

Very well said. Depending on your perspective, you may actually see that Mazda did a much better job, in the sense that they were working on a cost budget 1/4 of that of the Ferrari, and who knows how much less of an R&D budget as well, yet STILL managed to produce such an awesome racecar.

Anyone (who's not a dummy) can manage to produce astounding results if the budget is big enough. Producing the same or similar results on a tremendously smaller budget...now that is a major accomplishment IMO.

 

I know what they are... I was suggesting them... I may have missed it, but I didn't see that suggested in the past posts to this thread.

Jeremy

P.S. Thx for the pics though!