Quote:
Originally Posted by maverickmage
For example: The wing on the mustang shouldn't be considered rice since the wings serves to apply downforce on a RWD car. It would be considered rice if it was on a civic since it really serves no purpose and makes the car worse.
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When it comes to downforce, it doesn't really matter if its a FWD or a RWD car. And for the most part, they aren't there to improve acceleration. Generally speaking, by the time the car is going fast enough that it would be generating substantial amounts of downforce, its also going fast enough (and in a high enough gear) to not spin the tires.
Downforce is far more important for handling on a circuit, namely long sweeping corners. Here, adding downforce to the rear of a front heavy car (be it a Civic or a Mustang) will give the back tires more grip, which reduces oversteer (although I've got to admit, FWD cars don't oversteer very much).
Additionally, rear wings aren't the only source of downforce for cars. There are also front splitters, such as the one font on the ZL1
Here, we have a device creating downforce on the front end of a RWD car (the hood vents help with this also). Again, this is done to improve handling, just like the rear spoiler.
All that said, slapping big ugly spoilers onto a car that isn't going to see a track (except for maybe from the parkinglot) let alone have enough performance to actually make use of them is definately rice