In January 1996, we published the road-test figures of a popular German sedan. At the time, it was sold with the option of a ‘motorsport-derived’ body kit. The trouble was, once the test results were compared against those recorded by the standard car without the added spoiler, sills and rear wing, the untouched version was the faster of the two in all the real-world tests that mattered.
In many cases, the drawback with (usually faux) aero that is bolted on to an otherwise sleek road-going car – added at the behest of a marketing department – is that, by default, these appendages add both weight and
