Alfa Romeo BAT 5, BAT 7, and BAT 9
I don't normally combine two cars into one Car Lust, much less three, but the Bertone-designed Alfa Romeo BAT 5, BAT 7, and BAT 9 concept cars are almost impossible to separate. The result of a challenge from Alfa Romeo to the Bertone design studio to develop highly aerodynamic cars without sacrificing Alfa's Italian panache and design heritage, the Berlinetta Aerodinamica Tecnica (BAT) cars offered three different interpretations of the Alfa Romeo of tomorrow.
I'll tackle the aesthetic triumphs of the BAT series below, but first let's make it clear that the aerodynamic experimentation was a big success. The BAT 5 is the shortest and stubbiest of the three, ringing in with a coefficient of drag of .23--slightly better than notoriously slick fuel-sippers like the 1999-2006 Honda Insight (.25) and 2004-2009 Toyota Prius (.26). The BAT 7 is longer and even more extreme, and it sports a sensational .19 cd--as far as I can tell, slicker than any production car made and in line with the most advanced prototypes. The BAT 9 was designed to bring the BAT styling cues into a more conventional shape; while I haven't been able to find its drag numbers, I'm sure they are impressive for the era.
The era? Oh, yes, that's the most amazing part. The BAT 5, 7, and 9 were unveiled in, respectively, 1953, 1954, and 1955. For those of you without a calculator handy, that's more than 50 years ago. With Wikipedia's help, here is a slice of life in 1953: Dwight D. Eisenhower became president, Joseph Stalin died, the Korean War ended, the FCC approved the color television, and the U.S. government still tested nuclear weapons outdoors, in front of a live audience. Without meaning to be insulting to our older readers, that was a long time ago--and back then most cars looked like this.
I love early 1950s cars, but the vast majority were slab-sided, with inverted-bathtub shapes and weighed down with acres of ornate chrome designs. As mentioned, the BAT 7 had a cd of .19; I don't know the coefficient of drag of a typical early 1950s sedan, but I'm guessing that it was like, oh, 5.19. That's not meant to be damning; wind-tunnel work wasn't yet de rigueur in automotive circles, and the market wasn't demanding wildly aerodynamic vehicles. Bertone whipping up these wind-cheating cars in the 1950s is the rough equivalent of an Italian artisan presenting a prototype Windows laptop to the UNIVAC guys.
So far I've just discussed the way the BATs interact with the air; I find their interaction with my eyes far more interesting. In this era of bolt-upright vehicles and gaudy ostentation, the BATs married streamlining, purposeful profiles, and jet-fighter aesthetics to stunning effect.The rear wings are the most dramatic elements, but every part of the designs looks right. Even--especially?-- compared to modern cars, the BATs are attractive, sleek, smooth, low, and snarky, with fine detailing that would inspire sports cars for the next several decades. The recessed front grilles, the swooping, complex rear wings, and the ornate split rear windows all showed up later in one form or another in the following decades, if not quite to the degree seen on the BATs. I could stare at these cars for hours; my favorite of the three is whichever I'm ogling at the time.
Under the skin of each BAT was an Alfa Romeo 1900 chassis and a 100-horsepower engine. Even with that modest power output, the BATs' slick shape allowed them to reach the 120 mph range--scorching performance for the time.
As we've seen in recent years, aerodynamic shapes do not always lend themselves to distinctive beauty, but the BAT cars show us that need not be the case. The BATs are gorgeous and lust-worthy just for their sultry looks, but I think their lasting significance is their ability to marry slinky shapes with astonishing aerodynamics. Take note, automotive designers.
All three BATs are grouped in the top photo; the following photos are of the 5, 7, and 9, respectively. The top image is a common one all over the web, but the other images here need some description. Automotive photographer Ken Brown posts pictures on Flickr as moosehd2, and he has a set of BAT pictures that, as you can see, are completely stunning. Frankly, most photographs of the BATs are disappointing--they don't capture the cars' stance, their lines, the sheer rightness of their design. Brown's photos do justice to the cars, which is incredibly high praise. Check out his BAT photos and his other work; it's all outstanding.
--Chris H.
Cookie the Dog's Owner on October 08, 2008 at 04:31 PM
They need to be black. Glossy black. After all, they're BATmobiles, aren't they?
Smoke_Jaguar4 on October 08, 2008 at 07:04 PM
"I don't know the coefficient of drag of a typical early 1950s sedan, but I'm guessing that it was like, oh, 5.19." That made me laugh. Just so you know, a standard circular dome-shaped parachute has a Cd of 1.5. Getting beyond 2 is challenging.
These are beautiful cars. It also shows that an aesthetically pleasing design and efficiency are not mutually exclusive (I'm looking at you, Prius). Now that Alfa Romeo are returning to the U.S. market, it would be nice if they could revisit this part of their vast heritage.
David Colborne on October 08, 2008 at 10:24 PM
If we showed a Windows laptop to the UNIVAC guys, they'd stop computing altogether to spare humanity the horrors that their progeny unleashed upon the world.
(I kid, I kid. Mostly.)
In all seriousness... wow. Those are simply amazing cars. I mean, a lot of people at the time thought "airplane-like" meant "let's throw fins on a bathtub!" These guys, though, apparently decided "airplane-like" meant "build and design the car to FLY"; perhaps if the Italian Air Force could build planes like Alfa Romeo could prototype cars, they might have done a little better last time around.
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jack Hawkins on October 09, 2008 at 07:38 AM
A lot of neat cars were designed in the fifties, and aerodynamics were very much in the air. Think D-type Jaguars which also have a good Cd, and the MG record cars of the late 50's. EX 181 achieved a Cd of 0.12 to manage 250 mph from 1.5 litre supercharged. The BAT experiments led directly to the Alfa-Romeo Guilietta Sprint Speciale (it's my wife's favorite).
Gavin on October 09, 2008 at 08:26 AM
These Bats always really intrigued me, but I could never figure out which one being my favourite.
Chris Hafner on October 09, 2008 at 09:42 AM
CTDO: "After all, they're BATmobiles, aren't they?"
Batman *wishes* he drove a car this cool.
Smoke_Jaguar4: "Just so you know, a standard circular dome-shaped parachute has a Cd of 1.5. Getting beyond 2 is challenging."
Very interesting - and remarkable that a Hummer H2 is at .57. That's horrific. Can you safely say that a parachute is half as aerodynamic as a Hummer, or does the scale not work that way? According to Wikipedia, Formula 1 cars vary from .7 to 1.1, not surprising, given all of the downforce they generate. I've heard that letting off the throttle of an F1 car at high speed generates some pretty hard braking - a bit like a parachute deploying!
By the way, for anybody still unsure, my tongue was firmly in cheek for the 5.19 number - if forced to guess, I would think the typical 1950s sedan would be .4-.5.
Jack Hawkins: "A lot of neat cars were designed in the fifties, and aerodynamics were very much in the air."
Yep, there were some projects - but these projects were dramatically out of the ordinary in a world dominated by more frumpy 1950s vehicles. It's hard to imagine what would be equivalently radical to today's eyes.
Zane on October 09, 2008 at 02:44 PM
Total drag on a vehicle is proportional to its Cd and frontal area...this explains it pretty well, with lots of car model data:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficients
It's not mentioned, but I believe Cd is also a function of the airspeed (Reynold's number, actually). Cd would generally drop with increasing airspeed.
Cookie the Dog's Owner on October 09, 2008 at 03:10 PM
There was an article in Car & Driver in about 1980-81-82 on how to estimate Cd. I remember working through the formula using my girlfriend's Buick.
Sillypickle on October 10, 2008 at 04:17 PM
I don't know how to calculate it, but what I do know about Cd is that a flat plane has a Cd of 1, so that's sort of what you're comparing things to. A Cd of .5 would thus be half the drag per square foot of a flat plane. The reason seemingly small differences matter so much is that the force (f) require to accelerate a mass (m) to a particular speed (v) is f=mv^2. This applies not only to your car but to the air it has to push out of the way, since air has mass as well. While insignificant at lower speeds, it takes a lot of force (work done by your engine) to accelerate air from 0-80 mph all the time, so if you double the amount of air a vehicle must push out of the way you quadruple the amount of force needed just to overcome drag.
Mochi Mochi on October 13, 2008 at 03:02 PM
mmmm bat good. This is a time when Alfa really shone. Obviously these sexy curves are not cheap to manufacture but Alfa has never been cheap.
We tend to think of good aerodynamics (low drag) as being a recent invention. But obviously that would be a mistake. In the 50's, 60's, and 70's low drag was the rule in race cars. Look at any of the F1 cars from the late 60s and you are looking at a car that was all about low drag and the important low cross-sectional area. In 1970 the 917 porsche was just about as fast a car as could be. It had about 1000 hp and 1000ft-lb of torque. It could reach speeds well in excess of 240mph. But it was about drag not downforce, and to run at Le Mans drivers would have to let off the throttle at some points on the course to avoid becoming airborne... and at speeds over 200 mph that means something rather more than awkward.
Zarba on October 14, 2008 at 08:38 AM
These cars have stood the test of time as some of the most dramatic and expressive aerodynamic experiments ever done. And as has already been said, they were not the product of wind tunnels, but of superb design. As a long time Alfisti, they are the pinnacle of postwar Alfa design.
One of these, I think BAT 5, was found in a used car lot in the Midwest in the 60's. Just a funny-looking old car...
Why, oh why, doesn't this ever happen to me???
joe on October 17, 2008 at 02:47 PM
Alfa Romeo, back before their government overseers forced some boneheaded decisions upon them, made some very aerodynamic cars. The Giulia Super TI, which was frankly not the handsomest 4-door ever built, had a Cd of .29 and the svelte Junior Zagato -- try one with an upgraded Twin Spark engine, for ridiculous fun -- clocked in at .23...and these cars were made in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively.
-J.
Chris Hafner on December 29, 2008 at 02:01 PM
A reader has forwarded me this video of the BAT cars actually driving under their own power at a car show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOfM8WDyBmA&feature=PlayList&p=EB33394BFACDBDAE&playnext=1&index=15