The case for motorcycles. Why not use one?

[GasSavers_SD26]

Originally Posted by Mighty Mira

From what I've seen of motorcycle fairings, I'm not very impressed with their attempts at drag reduction. Consider how large an area the wheels are wrt the whole frontal area. Compare that to a car, where the wheels account for about 20%. I would not be surprised if they account for 50% of the drag.

Of course, the other option would be to go the whole hog with basically a modified HPV design. Better drag coefficient from the front, at the expense of more buffeting from the crosswinds.

Agreed. Motorcycle fairings are about styling primarily, and then some amount of buffeting as a secondary concern. Recently, yeah, there has been a bit more attention as there hasn't been many huge strides in MC engines for a while. They are making them more powerful with more rev's, but ti valves can cause problems over the longevity of the bike.

Crosswinds are pretty rough on bikes. In road racing they were outlawed from the international bodies in the 50's/60's as they led to some deaths on track. Yes, they did allow better acceleration and higher top speeds for those that worked on such designs, but they never really moved much into the main stream production market.