Autos: Going the Extra Mileage

Newsweek, December, 2005 by Keith Naughton

Inside Ford Motor Co.'s cavernous wind tunnel, a thin stream of smoke glides gracefully over the new Lincoln Zephyr. But what catches the eye of aerodynamic engineer Wayne Koester is a tiny somersault of smoke just where the back window hits the trunk. "Do you see that?" he says, pointing from behind the control-room window. "That's turbulence." And turbulence is the archenemy of aerodynamics. Koester tried to persuade Lincoln's designers to lower the trunk to improve mileage. But they balked, saying Lincoln's customers demand a big trunk to haul golf clubs. The result: the Zephyr gets 45kpg on the highway--1.6kpg less than its sister car, the Ford Fusion.

These days, though, mileage misers like Koester are gaining traction in Motown. With oil prices high and likely to go...

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