This past weekend, team members George and Bob Voll, son and father, drove to Nashville Tennessee for the wedding of a family member. George, as he often does, drove the Vincitore' 1000, to put it through a long trip. The car handled the foothills of central Kentucky with ease, making the trip in a little over 2 1/2 hours. He was happy to pass by all of the fuel stations with out a need to stop. While in Nashville, team videographer and editor, Dave Boyd, shot some scenes with the Vincitore' 1000 and did an interview with George. These shots will be edited into a video to be posted later. The next day, after recovering from lots of eating, George and Bob returned to the Hoosier State. While going through Bowling Green, Kentucky, they stopped at the National Corvette Museum ( http://www.corvettemuseum.com/ ). A fun place to visit if you love cars! In the front was a the 1968 Astrovette. This is an experiment in how aerodynamically efficient the Corvette body could be made.
There are many ideas that were used that were not new at the time, such as the boat tail, wheel skirts and flush hubcaps. They did stretch the car a bit from it's original length, resulting in a very attractive shape. What does this visit have to do with the Vincitore'1000 and high mileage efficiency? Drag coefficient. By improving the shape to allow airflow to move without obstruction or turbulence, higher operating efficiency was achieved. The same is being done to the Vincitore'1000. The original Chevrolet Metro has a shape that works well, but needs a bit more turbulence reduction, which is going to help us win the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize. By making the car "slicker", the car will leave a smaller wake, producing less turbulence. That in turn, puts less demand on the powertrain, and the result is higher MPGe for the vehicle. The stop in Bowling Green was a good learning event along the highway.
