Is your performance car lying to you?

Jan. 22, 2015

For purposes of safety, it’s long been recognized that otherwise silent hybrid and electric vehicles need to emit some noise to warn pedestrians and others. But it turns out that even your ICE muscle car might be emitting what Drew Harwell in The Washington Post describes as “fake engine noise.”

Harwell writes, “The engine growl in some of America’s best-selling cars and trucks is actually a finely tuned bit of lip-syncing, boosted through special pipes or digitally faked altogether.”

The 2015 Mustang EcoBoost, he adds, employs a “…system that amplifies the engine’s purr through the car speakers.”

Without the faking, he adds, “today’s more fuel-efficient engines would sound far quieter and, automakers worry, seemingly less powerful….”

Many performance car enthusiasts are not happy, and when asked by Harwell to comment, Ford’s sound-enhancement engineers were strangely silent.

Karl Brauer, a senior analyst with Kelley Blue Book, says automakers admit to drivers that they are creating fake sounds. Harwell quotes him as saying, “If you’re going to do that stuff, do that stuff. Own it.”

About the Author

Rick Nelson | Contributing Editor

Rick is currently Contributing Technical Editor. He was Executive Editor for EE in 2011-2018. Previously he served on several publications, including EDN and Vision Systems Design, and has received awards for signed editorials from the American Society of Business Publication Editors. He began as a design engineer at General Electric and Litton Industries and earned a BSEE degree from Penn State.

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