Unforgettable Car Geniuses: Wunibald Kamm

If you are a genius and you want to find solutions to complex problems, turning your approach to the subject upside down helps you find the solution: in order to overcome the resistance of objects that have to find their maximum efficiency in water or air, it is better to know all the requirements of water and air perfectly before trying to find solutions. Wunibald Kamm realised this when, as a 25-year-old, he found himself on board the airships of the Bavarian Air Corps during the First World War. The debate between the opportunities provided by the use of the “lighter than air” versus the “heavier”, the aeroplane, was heated. What better lesson than experience? By studying air and its effects, including everything that follows the moment of its penetration of a body in motion - as well as of a body advancing through water - Kamm arrived at insights that became rules after his experiments. Who could have imagined that the effect of air penetrated by a dynamic body such as a vehicle, regaining a state of stillness, would contribute to the performance of the vehicle if the vehicle's aerodynamic shape was cut off? Today, the “Kamm-tail”, which has become the “Kamm-tail” for everyone, is part of the norm. This was not the case when, in the first experiments on cars - Zagato's famous one with the Giulietta SZ which, when built as a truncated-tail prototype, gained, under identical mechanical and climatic conditions, between 12 and 15 km/h top speed - what Kamm had already experimented with in the late 1930s was confirmed.

However, it would be a mistake to lump Kamm's genius solely with the truncated tail innovation that revolutionised car styling in the 1960s. The Alfa Romeo Giulia, with its apparently disconcerting styling due to the clean cut rear end, was precisely launched on the concept of the innovative solution with the slogan “the wind designed it”. But the German engineer had done much more.