Car Spats: Those Weird Plastic Flaps by Your Car’s Wheels

Look down at your car sometime. See those weird little plastic flaps sticking out near the wheels? Yeah, those things. Nobody seems to know what they're called or why they're there. Turns out, they actually have a name: "spats." And no, carmakers didn't just slap them on because they had leftover plastic to use up.

Cars these days are serious engineering projects. With fuel prices what they are and everyone worried about their carbon footprint, car designers obsess over every little detail that might save a drop of gas.

Those plastic flaps? They're air bouncers. When you're cruising down the highway with that whooshing sound all around you, your car is basically punching through a wall of air. Without those spats, that air would smack right into your tires—which, if you think about it, are basically big flat surfaces from the front.

The spats just nudge that air to go around your tires instead of slamming into them. Pretty clever, right? This little trick helps your car slip through the air easier, keeps your front end from wanting to lift up at highway speeds (yikes!), and even helps your car handle better.

Some fancy cars even use these things to channel air toward the brakes to keep them cool. Talk about multitasking!

Don't confuse these with the flaps behind wheels, though. Those back ones are just mud guards to keep your car from spraying gunk all over the place when you drive through puddles.

So next time someone asks about those weird plastic bits, you can drop some knowledge: "Oh, those? They're aerodynamic spats that reduce drag coefficient and improve fuel economy." Then walk away like the car genius you now are.