Benefits from OEM chin / duck tail spoilers?

[Jeff Stout]

Originally Posted by Larry Hill

I always wondered if the air deflector at the back of a wagon to help keep the back glass clean would help or hurt performance.

The Olds wagon is just fast enough that the deflector helps get dust off of rear window. So it does show diverting air in a forward direction.

[Brad Hawk]

First, I'm not one of the Hawks that the 1st poster believes me to be. Actually, my name is actually spelled H-a-a-k, but it's pronounced "Hawk' so sometimes that's how I list myself online. Ironically, I have a brother who lives very close to the track outside Boise, ID (he lives in Eagle), but he's a complete non-gearhead. I'm on the other side of the country, in the Washington, D.C. suburbs.

Some older articles I found on vehicle aerodynamics let me to believe that anything you could do to reduce the amount of air getting under the front of the car would be a good thing (ground clearance permitting), and could help with keeping the front end from lifting on the big end, too. What I wasn't sure of is whether the OEM-type chin spoilers were physically large enough to be functional in that respect, or were primarily cosmetic add-ons.

I know the ducktail spoilers do "something", but what exactly -- and under what conditions -- I'm not sure. I did find it interesting that all of the Drag Pak Challengers have come with a front air splitter, but only the latest generation of the supercharged 354 version now has the ducktail spoiler, as well.