You never know what you have until it’s gone, and the proliferation of hood scoops on turbocharged cars is a perfect example of that. Looking back in time a decade or two, it was more common for turbocharged or supercharged road cars to have functional hood scoops, from station wagons to muscle cars to pickup trucks. Nowadays, though, cars leaving the production line with these attention-grabbing features are less common, and that sucks.
Hood scoops are pretty self explanatory. They’re raised openings on a car’s hood that are used to increase the flow of cool air into the engine compartment, and were once most common on cars with forced induction systems like turbochargers or superchargers to maximize their power output and efficiency. Hood scoops can also benefit naturally-aspirated cars, but the nature of forced induction systems calls for extra cooling. Whether turbocharged, supercharged, or a combination of the two, forced induction systems force air into a car’s engine which allows it to burn more fuel and produce more power. Forced induction, especially turbochargers, have become commonplace in modern cars because they allow physically smaller engines to produce the power of a larger engine while allowing more fuel efficiency and weight savings. Cars ranging from the smallest and cheapest Chevrolets and Dodges you can buy to the most expensive Ferraris and McLarens now use turbochargers, so where are all the cool hood scoops?
When the revival of the Mini brought a sporty Cooper S to the U.S. market, it prominently featured a tasty hood scoop to feed cool air to its supercharged four-cylinder engine. The second and third-generations of the Cooper S transitioned to using turbochargers, and their distinctive designs still retained hood scoops, but they were no longer functional. The fourth-generation Mini Cooper S recently launched, and it did away with even the fake signature hood scoop entirely. How was Mini able to keep the high-performance powertrain without needing the additional cooling from the hood scoop? The air intake was moved to the top of the front grille, which rendered the hood scoop unnecessary. The latest Cooper S dropped the fake hood scoop in favor of a smoothed-out design ethos that sterilized the look into its current form.
Subaru used to sell many different cars with hood scoops, from its weirdo crossover pickup truck the Baja to the Legacy family sedan to the Forester family crossover to the Outback station wagon. Now, Subaru only sells one model with a hood scoop, the WRX performance sedan. The Outback XT still features a turbocharged engine, and so does the three-row Ascent, but for some unfortunate reason neither car comes with a hood scoop. Subaru said the hood scoop was dropped from the Outback XT’s design to maximize aerodynamic efficiency and thus maximize the platform’s fuel economy.
As car design shifted to focus on maximizing aerodynamic efficiency and fuel efficiency, hood scoops got the axe. Engineers started integrating the air intakes necessary for turbocharged cars into the grille, instead of letting big rowdy hood scoops do the work. As we continue inching toward an electric future, EVs don’t need anywhere near as much airflow as an internal combustion engine so cars with hood scoops may end up disappearing from new car lots. Don’t go sticking fake AutoZone hood scoops to your cars, though, we don’t need any of that.
