OT: Best sounding car ever?

[avalonracing]

Best sounding car is... A motorcycle!

Honda CBX 6 cylinder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQfI6TPbIfg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39JM42N7_cc

[Bob Ross]

Not really a car guy, but this thread reminds me of something I experienced many many years ago, mid-1970s when I was probably 15 years old:

I'm locking my bike up at the mall, about to go shopping for...um...whatever it was that 15-year-old me used to shop for ...when I hear this deep throbbing hum, like a cross between the 32' pipe on a massive church organ, and the one-note booty-shaking trunk-rattling thrum of a poorly-tuned-but-massively-overdriven subwoofer in the trunk of a Mercedes with blacked-out windows (that wouldn't become a common cultural reference for at least another 20 years). And this deep throbbing hum gets louder and louder until it is almost deafening, and I feel like the aqueous humour in my eyeballs is starting to boil from being pressurized by this massive subsonic note, this unbelievably pure single tone residing way down in the netheroctaves. And I'm looking all around trying to figure out what's causing this sound, this Big Note, this subsonic chest-collapsing sonic boom of a buzz

...when a yellow DeThomaso Pantera drives by.

First one I'd ever seen. Or heard. I will never forget the sound of that car.

[PeregrineA1]

My Dad was a teacher, first high school then 2 year college. It was common for his friends to have him, when they were ready to sell a car, take the car to school with him to get a broad audience.

One of these cars was the car of the son of a friend, the son going to Vietnam. The car was a '67 Camaro set up for drag racing. When he started that thing in the garage it was deafening and fantastic to my 9 or 10 year old ears.

I still like a good American V-8 and there are some great sounds right now. But my favorite is probably a Porsche GT3 with the exhaust uncorked, followed closely by any of several Ferrari's.

[Steve in SLO]

1) Just about any V12 Ferrari.
2) 914/6 I had with a 2.2L S motor with Webers, sport muffler best heard in a tunnel.
3) My GT3 cruising down our town's narrow main street at about 25mph in 1st gear.

[jischr]

Whatever they put in the Mustang that McQueen drove in Bullet. 351 Cleveland??

[carpediemracing]

I wish I had a recording of my plain/simple Passat. It wasn't a great car, it ended up ingesting its own engine parts, but while it was running...

Very straight forward. VR6. Cold air intake (which just makes it sound so great, I got one for the Z for that reason alone). Light flywheel. It had some cat back exhaust but I don't know what, very mellow whatever it was. When you stabbed the throttle to heel/toe it sounded like shotguns going off. I used to downshift in tunnels or long bridges (like on FDR in NYC) just to hear it. I think part of the reason the engine failed was that I loved to hear it rev to its higher-than-stock 7200 rpm redline.

The other car I had that had a "distinctive" sound was because some welds failed on some exhaust parts and I didn't realize it. GTI, 16v, 1.8 liter. No CAI (if I'd known about the sound they add under throttle I'd have added one). I didn't think it was that loud (although we lost our voices yelling over the engine noise on a 5 hour drive, should have given me a hint) but one morning I went to pick up a teammate who lived maybe a mile off the highway. He was waiting for me when I rolled up at some awful hour, like 4 AM (for a NYC park race). I asked him how he knew I was about to show up. He said he heard me downshift for the exit off the highway. Haha. He was a junior (15 years old at the time?) so after that I tried to be more mellow about it so his parents thought I was setting a good example.

[carpediemracing]

Also Ducati.

[ergott]

2003 Honda V10 on the dyno

https://youtu.be/8DYl4mD_620?t=27s

You can picture the Suzuka circuit as you listen to a lap.

[ergott]

This sounds like pure evil.

https://youtu.be/gSHToyGIxWE?t=46s

[ergott]

This one even sings God Save the Queen.

https://youtu.be/1JPBdBIFGNQ?t=56s

[Ed-B]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAXGuD_f3Kw

[Spdntrxi]

Originally Posted by benb

That 787b might sound good in the video, my experience IRL is that Mazda rotaries are pretty horrible to listen to at the race track.. the sound is almost painful compared to other cars due to the tone.



I'll take a BMW inline 6 or just about any type of V8 (cross plane/inline plane or whatever it's called) instead for nice sounds. Some Motos sound amazing too, Ducati V-twins, just about any V-4, etc... Inline 4 motos sound OK at the track but horrible out on the street IMO.



But the absence of sound of a Tesla is pretty nice too. When race cars fully switch over we won't have to build tracks in the middle of nowhere too.

Yeah 2 rotors drone like mad The driver has it worse believe me.. But the 787 is not 2 rotors . It's a beautiful sound

[Flying Pigeon]

A high revving naturally aspirated V12 like in the Pagani Zonda sounds good to me.

Along those lines there is a Japanese fabricator that sells a full exhaust for old Mercedes 600 sedans. It is a V12 from the same family tree as the Zonda.. hear the resemblance?:

https://youtu.be/oN8pHJ3sQ0Q

[Tickdoc]

Not a bad sound at all....but can you imagine it daily?

http://youtu.be/ZBfXupvEyOI

[witcombusa]

Maybe not the 'best' ever, but in the running for top 20 anyway...