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The new Bora, released to the China market in June 2018, is entirely upgraded compared to the previous generation. In the phase of aerodynamic development, CFD was extensively used to improve the new Bora’s design, especially in the early stage of development. During the styling stage, some key aerodynamic features were incorporated into the new Bora design which considerably reduced the aerodynamic drag. The design of the new cooling module seal and the underbody panels also greatly improved the aerodynamic performance. These in total have resulted in 11% drag reduction of the new Bora, over its previous generation. The performance improvement was confirmed in the wind tunnel test and the comparison between wind tunnel test results and CFD results was very good.

The recent facelift of the Chinese version of the VW Bora incorporated several changes of the styling of the upper body. In particular, front facia, A-Pillar and rear end were subject to design changes. As major effects on the aerodynamics performance were not expected, extensive wind tunnel testing for the upper body design changes was not included in the development plan except for final performance evaluation. Nevertheless, an aerodynamic study of the effects of the design changes was undertaken using a CFD based process. At the same time, the facelift offered the opportunity for reducing the aerodynamic drag by improving the underbody flow. The design of the engine undercover and the wheel spoilers were considered in this effort. For this purpose the CFD based aerodynamic study was extended to include respective design features.