Sometimes you want to drive fast or show off, and other times you want to look a little more responsible. Stellantis might have the perfect solution for you. CarBuzz has just found a patent that describes a modular wing system, which would let you switch out the wing on your car quickly and easily.
Essentially, it’s a way to almost instantly get more looks and performance on demand, something that someone shopping for, say, a Copperhead sports car might love.
Buyers Love Wings, Functional Or Not
Buyers love wings. An aerodynamically enhancing appendage is often one of the first changes an enthusiast will make to their car. Sometimes they’re wings that reach to the sky, others they’re comically small ones that are making fun of the big ones.
Stellantis recognizes that popularity. It also acknowledges that adding spoilers and wings to a car can enhance performance, not just appearance. The idea here is to let you swap out panels to meet both needs.
The example in the patent – amusingly displayed on a graphical representation of the Dodge Caliber SRT4 – shows just a few of the possibilities. The drawings include the main flap for the wing as well as pillars, winglets, and spoilers that can be swapped out.
How Would These Wild Wings Work?
Stellantis says the different components would use clips to hold everything together. It doesn’t dive into too much detail about the clips, but we imagine that they’d have to be more than the typical tree-style clips that hold on other small trim pieces. Those clips break easily enough as is, but they definitely wouldn’t be up to handling any amount of downforce.
The patent even describes a wing or winglets that can move or retract. An electric motor would rotate the wing into different positions, including a high-downforce setting and one designed to keep dirt, snow, and rain off of the rear glass. A controller in the vehicle would adjust the setting, letting you go full peacock as needed and fully discreet if the peacocking works and you have to meet their parents. Or go to a work event.
Take a walk through any auto accessory shop and you’ll find loads of wings. It’s even easy to find people who want to swap wings from one version of a car to another, both to go big and to go small. The WRX and WRX STI were famous for that one.
So it makes sense that Stellantis, especially its Mopar and Direct Connection accessory arms would want to get in on that. Offering a modular setup means they can sell you more than one wing, since swapping it doesn’t mean drilling new holes in your trunk or destroying more paint.
CarBuzz Insight – Why This Matters:
If you want a trackday wing and a weekday wing, this patent is perfect. It’s great for anyone who likes to frequently change up their car’s looks, too. We don’t know if anyone breaks their wing very often, but that’s another use case for the idea.
Stellantis, the Dodge brand especially, loves a good accessory. That makes this an almost perfect fit for its buyer base. One that could give you a Daytona-style wing some of the time, a tight spoiler others, and maybe even avoid police if you can swap the parts out quickly enough. Just like a GTA paint shop.
Patent filings do not guarantee the use of such technology in future vehicles and are often used exclusively as a means of protecting intellectual property. Such a filing cannot be construed as confirmation of production intent.
Source: US Patent & Trademark Office