It is the Euro 2008 soccer championships and this city is going nuts. Every second car on the street is festooned with little flags; perhaps they shouldn’t be. Engineers are quoted in the Guardian as saying that that the flags, which are usually attached to window frames, cause wind resistance, which alters a car’s aerodynamics and causes it to burn more fuel.
The Austrian car club says “attaching two flags to a car leads to an increased petrol consumption of “up to half a litre a kilometre on motorways and rural stretches”.
The Germans accuse the Austrians of being spoilsports. “As Austria has no chance of victory, it would appear they’re trying to make this into a problem for Germany. The eco party poopers have managed to declare even football a climate-killer … there are no sacred cows any more when it comes to the climate debate.”
I would guess that they could use the greens’ hot air to fill the ball.
The Austrian car club says “attaching two flags to a car leads to an increased petrol consumption of “up to half a litre a kilometre on motorways and rural stretchesâ€.
What an utter and complete load of crap. You’d need a flag half as big as your car trailing behind you at highway speeds to create enough air resistance to piss on your mileage that badly.
I’m guessing they did their testing with flags running across the car and attached at both ends, like banners to be seen from the front/back, in order to get that kind of result.