I’ve seen the owners of cars like Lamborghinis graunch large sections of their plastic bodyshell to crumbs during accidental contact with a kerb or a pothole.
Today’s invention is a road-car body skirt which moves up and down automatically in response to the ups and downs of the road surface immediately in front of the vehicle. These irregularities could be detected by some kind of idler wheel but, more elegantly, by a small scanning laser beam (We already have acoustic parking detectors but there is a need for more than beeping when travelling at speed).
This would allow a car to travel rapidly on a motorway, with the skirt fully down (reducing both drag and road noise significantly -the skirt would cover most of the wheels themselves, when in the lowest position).
Encounter a brick or a speed bump and the skirt would rise to accommodate the obstruction.
