If the shape with the least air-resistance is a raindrop 💧, why are most cars shaped like a backwards raindrop? 🚗

Question

I am basing my question off this [image](https://study.com/cimages/multimages/16/dragcoefficients8851096396303799158.png)

Edit: Okay, okay, I should have said “teardrop” instead of “raindrop.” Talking about the *actual* shape of raindrops doesn’t really help given the visuals I provided.

In: 558

Answer 1

Worth noting that a teardrop is not the most aerodynamic shape. Nature is not “optimizing for minimum drag”. If it were, raindrops would be shaped more like pencils, and would travel many times faster. But pencils are inherently unstable falling straight down – they go so fast that a slight imbalance in air pressure causes them to flip sideways and tumble (also why pennies dropped from the Empire State won’t kill pedestrians). So the teardrop shape is a balance between minimum drag and stability at a given speed (with other factors like surface tension, viscosity and density thrown in). Circling back to cars, the most streamlined shape is a also pencil, but that’s totally impractical for passengers and road space.