“On the exterior design portion, the aerodynamic drag is our biggest contributor,” Galante told me. “It kind of comes up off the hood, up the A pillar, and tapers down towards the back, and finishes in a square, yet tapered pillar reminiscent of the original Wagoneer. But through the middle of the car, it’s basically ideal for what the wind wants to do.”
From the front or side perspective, this Wagoneer looks almost as boxy as a 1980s Jeep. But a rear viewing angle reveals the massive rear wing creating that illusion, which sits well off the sloping line of the rear roof and glass.
Credit:
Michael Teo Van Runkle
“Anytime we do a floating element, we think ‘Yeah, there’s no way engineering’s gonna let us get away with this,'” Galante laughed. “We work really collaboratively with the engineers, and they were like, ‘Let’s test it. Let’s see what it does.’ And they came back and said, ‘You know, yeah, this has potential. But you guys gotta make it sit off the surface three times more dramatically.'”
Galante estimates the original wing design rose up two inches, while the final production version is more like nine inches off the rear window. He also pointed out a host of other less obvious details, from body panels that step in by fractions of millimeters to differently rounded radii of wheel arch edges, and especially the confluence where the A pillar connects to the body.
“The windshield, the A pillar, the side glass, the mirror, the post that holds the mirror, the fender, everything comes together there,” he said. “I think every vehicle I’ve ever worked on, that was the last thing to finalize in the wind tunnel… I mean, we’re talking tenths of millimeters for some of the iterations that we’re doing in those areas. Especially the front edge of the A pillar, I can recall trying twenty, thirty, forty different radii on there to get that just right.”
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