Shape-shifting Merc IAA offers a glimpse of future
Concept unveiled at Frankfurt owes much to aeroplane design
IN THE late 1980s and early ‘90s it was all the rage for certain sportscars to feature motorised wings, and even if these active aerodynamic devices were there more for show than go, it’s a technology which has blossomed into something quite effective today.
The current Porsche 911 Turbo not only gets a raising and lowering rear wing but also a moveable front-lip spoiler, and even today’s BMW 3 Series comes with motorised flaps hidden behind its kidney grilles.
Active aero can also be witnessed quite clearly on Grand Prix Sundays, where F1 cars now deploy DRS (drag reduction systems) on long straights to gain top speed.
The problem with making a car as aerodynamic as possible, is that the most functional form isn’t always the most beautiful or practical. But now Mercedes is working on ways to make cars seriously slippery through the air, but at the same time pretty to look at when parked. The new Concept IAA (Intelligent Aerodynamic Automo- bile) on display now at the Frankfurt motor show is a futuristic shape-shifter of sorts, which takes active aerodynamics to a new level.
At the car’s rear end, eight moveable segments deploy to extend the tail by up to 390mm, and in the front fenders its side gills extend out by 25mm and back a further 200mm. The front bumper splitter also retracts by 60mm, and even the wheel rims themselves, which at standstill are dished by a more attractive 50mm, can morph into zero offsets to help the car slice through air more efficiently.
These extensive shape-altering devices, which activate automatically at 80km/h, lower the Concept IAA’s drag coefficient (measured in Cd values) from 0.25 in its normal form to an impressive 0.19. For reference, a typically brick-shaped vehicle such as a Hummer has a Cd figure of around 0.57, and a landspeed record racer designed to be extremely aerodynamically efficient could be as low as 0.11.
The most aerodynamically efficient production car sold today is Merc’s own CLA model with a Cd value of 0.22.
The Concept IAA was created only to demonstrate what could be possible in the future of active aero, but Mercedes says that some of its design features give an idea of what its high-end business saloons might look like soon.
To see a video of the Concept IAA with all its moving parts in action, visit http://goo.gl/kF4PGu