Spoilers and the Men Who Love Them

You’ve seen it before. Your driving down the road and you see a nice looking car coming towards you. You think “Wow, I’d love to own that car” then as you get closer you notice a monstrous extra appendage sticking out of the back of the car. It looks like an airfoil but it’s really just a spoiler. Your thought patterns change and you think “Holy crap that car is the fuggliest thing I’ve ever seen”.
At least that is the way I think. I never understood the reasoning behind spoilers. I understand their use and know they are essential on high speed race cars but on street cars they are just ugly. I saw a car this morning with one on and had the reaction I mentioned above. It just confuses me how that these people think they actually make a major difference to their cars performance (when in reality all it really does for street cars is increase drag on the car which consequently increases fuel consumption – though this increase is quite small).
In my mind a spoiler “spoils” the car and makes it worthless. Maybe someone could explain to me the draw of these monstrosities?

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4 Comments

  1. I am one of those men who love spoilers. 🙂 It does not come down to adding performance but rather looks or looking different. You have to admit nothing pulls a head around more than a car rolling down the road that has a big a$$ wing on the back.

  2. THANK YOU for this post. i agree 100% and i think spoilers on street cars are for nothing other then showing off (which i don’t understand, because, as you say, they don’t *do* anything). they are nothing but a pointless decoration and, yes, ugly.

  3. I love the ones that stick up about 3 feet off of the trunk. Those are the best. Ummm… Maybe people want their cars to look like lunch boxes? That’s what they remind me of…
    -H

  4. The thing with spoilers is not necessarily to increase performance, but rather to keep the car on the road. I had a Ford Escort GT several years ago. It was pretty powerful for a 4-cylinder, and the car was really light, so at high speed the back end, being much lighter than the front, has poor traction. The spoiler (which was low and tasteful) helped keep me on the ground. These enormous ones you see today (which I think look completely retarded) are totally cosmetic. Although some have taken to calling them wings, because they’re designed as a kind of anti-spoiler, to generate lift on the back end and make the car a little lighter.