2004-02-05 Useful for students

Mr Barnard is indirectly a lecturer of mine at the University of Hertfordshire (old Hatfield Polytechnic). The five star rating is because I read it a year ago and I found it very useful. It's more technical than the average Haynes books and includes many graphs and data from Katz et al., all documented in the ample appendices. An example of the chapters is one that describes the aero effects of radiators and their efficiency. This is not a book necessarily for a hill climb car enthusiast but for the person interested in what exact effect you will get by having a certain rear screen rake on a car, what sort of air mass flow you need for a certain amount of cooling, the effect of A pillars etc. If you are one of the believers in slippery bubble shapes, this book will explain what shapes are really as efficient as we believe. It has data from wind tunnels like Mira, VW, GM etc.
This is a book written by a lecturer with knowledge of all the papers written in the past 30 years or so, it's not a book by a racer. So if you wish to build a racing car, buy this in conjunction with one of the Haynes or other books. If you wish to know more about aerodynamics and do an degree on it, this will get you going.