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Kammback

A Kammback is a car body style influenced by the research of the German aerodynamicist Wunibald Kamm in the 1930s. Kamm showed that a better drag-reducing tail end design for a car is one that tapers until its cross-sectional area is approximately 50% of the car's maximum cross-section. At that point, the tail should cut off abruptly. Prior to this, a teardrop shape that tapered smoothly to a point was considered optimal. Kamm showed that an abbreviated teardrop actually worked better; the air still flowed as if the entire teardrop were still there, but without the surface drag of the long point.

Many cars since then have had a Kammback tail, especially sports cars. Usage of the term has fallen off as Kamm's principles have become more generally accepted.

American car manufacturers have described certain models as Kammbacks with greater or lesser degrees of accuracy. In many cases, it has simply been used as a substitute for "station wagon" or "hatchback".

General Motors produced a 2-door station wagon version of the Chevrolet Vega in the 1970s that was called a Kammback, although it lacked appreciable rear-end taper before the cut-off rear and thus cannot accurately be said to follow Kamm's design.

In 1978, a Kammback version of the Pontiac Firebird was seriously considered, and prototypes were built and shown. In many respects similar to what the British would call a shooting brake (a station wagon version of a sporting coupé), this "Type K" did not have a tailgate but rather lifting side windows for access to the cargo area. Costs eventually killed the project, but from 1980 replica aftermarket conversions were available for a short time from an independent manufacturer. In 1986 Chevrolet built two similar Camaros, but again the concept did not reach production.

AMC stylist Richard A. Teague became a fan of this truncated somewhat-"Kammback" style in the late 1960s as he considered simple ways of adding to AMC's model range. He came up with the idea of truncating a larger car to make a smaller, enabling the two cars to share a lot of common tooling. This concept first came to the public as the AMX, a cut-down 2-seat version of the 4-seat Javelin coupé, although this shared the Javelin's rear and was not a Kammback. A still further cut-down concept car with a Kammback tail, the AMX GT, was shown in 1968, but never entered production. Instead, Teague adapted the concept to AMC's next car, the compact Hornet, to produce the Gremlin subcompact. The same concept was later continued as the AMC Eagle Kammback.

In 1985, the Fiat Group introduced a rather luxurious small town car named the Y10, initially under the Autobianchi brand and later badged as a Lancia, featuring a Kammback, which, combined with its clean lines and clever bodywork detailing, gave a drag coefficient of 0.30, resulting in excellent fuel economy.

Other Kammback cars have included the Alfa Romeo GTV, the Maserati Khamsin, and the Volvo S60. The feature is also visible on hybrid cars designed for extremely high gas mileage, such as the third-generation Toyota Prius (see photo above) and the Honda Insight.

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