cliffyk

Though somewhat counter intuitive, waxing the car will increase drag, a dimpled/pebbled finish would be best--that's why golf ***** have dimples. If they didn't they would not fly nearly as far. The dimpled/pebbled finish creates a turbulent boundary layer that behaves as anti-friction bearings and reduces drag by reducing skin friction.

Here is a great article about automobile aerodynamics. It can be a bit technical at times, however the author does a good job of providing practical examples...

LilRoush

When looking at straight line racing, work on getting the car lighter instead. You'll see more results. However,keeping air out from under the car (splitter set up and side skirts), a hood and effective wing will help some. For your '03 body style, I'm a big fan of either the Steeda wing or the Roush wing (I have one of each). Both are actually designed to stabilized air flow coming off of the roof line/trunk.

Real hardcore aero is something to focus more on if you get into open track / road racing.

SteedaGus

Our aero package will help with downforce and grip at high speeds, but that will come at a price, that price will be increased high speed drag.

This will manifest itself on a drag race situation as a reduction in trap speed due to drag. On a car like yours, a front splitter and functional race wing would likely reduce your 1/4 mile trap speed 1 to as much as 2 miles per hour compared to what it would normally be.

The stability of the car however, particularly above 85mph or so, will noticeably change. The car will start feeling more planted as speed increases, instead of starting to feel lighter and less sure footed.

I've experienced this myself on our cars and it can be confidence inspiring at high speeds. Keep in mind though that this is a Mustang, not a high end supercar, so you are not going to achieve both increased downforce and stability while reducing drag like Ferrari does. Its a compromise in a Mustang.

tdcalhoun89

Lol, they actually did a mythbusters about that... they took 2 cars, 1 car covered in clay and 1 left alone, then made the dimples, and the car w/ the clay and dimples got better gas mileage than the 1 that was left alone.

cliffyk

It probably weighed more too...

cliffyk

As it states in the link I posted above wings are lift producing devices, this being negative lift for automotive use, and generate substantial drag if working effectively--so, maximum down force and lowest drag are mutually exclusive goals.

Also as stated in the article, F1 cars generate very high amounts of drag because the also generate down force equal to 4 or 5 times the car's weight--that's how they can pull 4g to 5g in turns and stay stuck to the raceway.

An interesting exercise would be to remove the stock wing from a GT and see if the fuel economy increased--if so it would be an indication of the wing's effectiveness...