Your Car’s Rear Spoiler Does Actually Serve a Purpose

What Does the Rear Spoiler of Your Car Do?

Here Gil’s Auto Sales, we have quite the selection of pre-owned vehicles, and if you look on the back end of the vast majority of them, you’ll find that there at least some form of a rear spoiler. Depending on the performance of the vehicle, the spoiler may be larger, but it all really depends. What you may be surprised to know is that the spoiler of the car is not always just for appearances. It does serve an actual purpose.

Advantages of Having a Spoiler on the Back of Your Car

To make a long story short, spoilers—at least the ones that are more than cosmetic—are there to increase a vehicles grip on the road. What they do is direct the airflow over the vehicle downwards, helping to put some weight on the back end of the vehicle. This extra weight helps to keep the vehicle on the ground, but as it’s not physical weight, it doesn’t inhibit the fuel economy ratings of the vehicles. Actual weight could be added, but that would not help the vehicle to perform well in turns, which is where it needs it.

Another one of the benefits of a spoiler is that it decreases drags. If you paid attention in physics, you know that drag can significantly slow down a vehicle, so decreasing it can do wonders for the performance of the vehicle. The problem is that too much downforce from the spoiler can quickly turn into too much drag. So the goal of every spoiler is to increase downforce, but to do it in a way that doesn’t increase drag.


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As we mentioned earlier, the size of the spoiler has a lot to do with the type of vehicle that it’s on. If you look at a race car for example, you’ll see that it has a massive spoiler, and that is because it needs that spoiler to increase downforce and to keep the vehicle on the road. It also does a lot to reduce drag, because as you would expect, a race car should be avoiding drag at all costs. If you look at a smaller sports car, the spoiler will not be quite as large, and that is because it doesn’t need as much downforce on it.

If you are interested in learning more about rear spoilers and the affect that they have on vehicles, we highly suggest that you stop by one of our many lots and check out the selection of used cars that we have available. There are spoilers of all shapes and sizes, and we can help pair you to the one that best fits you.