Quote:
Originally Posted by CamaroSkooter
A front splitter is equally beneficial to every vehicle, regardless of whether the front or rear (or all) wheels are transferring power to the ground.
The front splitter's sole purpose is to keep the front of the car glued to the ground at high speeds. If air gets under the front of any vehicle at higher speeds, the front lifts up and the effectiveness of the steering wheel is lessened. 
I don't think anyone believes rear spoilers are "pointless" on a front-wheel drive vehicle. Rear downforce is just as important as front end downforce at high speeds. Where you get serious complaints is with the spoilers that look like they were designed to fly a small aircraft. And those are usually the most pointless when attached to a vehicle that could never even remotely come close to the kind of speed that would require such a monstrosity...
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Thats kinda the point I was getting at. Everybody accepts that a front splitter helps handling, yet somehow a lot of people think that the
only reason why a car should have a rear spoiler or wing would be to give the drive wheels more traction to help it accelerate. The real reason is usually to either improve the airflow & reduce drag (like on the Camaro) or to add a bit of rear end grip to fight oversteer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeSVX
I use to think that it took high speeds before the wings did anything too. I'm currently reading a book called "Racecar:Searching for the Limit in Formula SAE" (free on Kindle). It's about a college team building a race car. They talk about adding wings to their design. Sandard thinking was that the wings wouldn't have any effect at speeds under 35mph, but their actually testing at an autocross showed that they had some effect even at slower speeds.
And, the effect has nothing to do with which wheels are the drive wheels. The traction benefit is in the cornering speeds of the car. The down force generated by the wings increase the traction available to the tires. That said, you can't just slap a wing on the trunk and call it good. You need to increase the down force on the front of the vehicle as well. In fact I would consider the front a little more important then the rear, if your iterested in anything other then going straight. Increasing down force on the rear will cause your rear suspesion to compress more. This can result in more air getting under the front of the car. If you haven't done something to compesate for that (stronger rear springs, or front lip). The front end will lift causing a lose of steering grip. The STi (pictured) has a different front facia then the standard WRX to reduce the air going under the front of the vehicle. How is the STi wing any different the the wing on the ACR Viper? Granted the wing on the ACR is $10,000 carbon fiber racing unit, but the basic function is the same.
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It also depends on how aggressive the design of the wing is. You can have one that is shaped such that it provides 200 lbs of downforce at 20 mph, while another needs to be doing 200 mph to do the same thing. Of course, if you've got a wing that provides a lot of downforce at low speed it will also cause an absolutely huge amount of downforce at highspeed -and a ton of drag too.