- Extremely Life-like.

Driving in the uncanny valley.

A different kind of sound system.

By Ted Melton.

I used to have a bean-tin fitted to one of my earlier cars. By this I mean a metal tube, attached in lieu of the original exhaust tip, ostensibly to make it seem as though I had fitted a premium exhaust system. Clearly I was fooling no-one but myself (the rally stickers and mud flaps were, thinking about it, a bit over the top on a Fiat Uno) but a pleasing side-effect of this modification was that due to a mere accident of fortune some perfect resonant frequency between metal cavity and escaping exhaust meant that the engine now sounded cammy and poppy on the overrun where before it had beet muted and smooth. A further attempt at the same mod on the subsequent car produced a sound so appalling that I reversed it immediately. It was dumb luck alone which gave that car it's extra zing. It can be the same thing which ruins one too.

Now, modern cars have all manner of intelligent and nuanced exhaust engineering solutions employed to change the noises. Quite apart from all the economy and emissions guff, it's the fun they've tried to provide which I'm interested in. Party tricks like venting the exhaust through short un-silenced sections of pipe for extra nuisance-neighbour complaints. Or, tuning them intricately to provide theatrical sound-effects and racing-car growls. Even injecting droplets of fuel for little chortles and coughs to accompany gear changes. With most production cars having hurdles to jump in terms of noise and particulate emission reduction, they've had to get pretty smart to provide the sort of singing that true petrolheads all crave.

It helps if you have a good engine note to start with. Rarely will there ever be a problem with any Alfa unit. In fact for that matter you'd be hard pressed to find a petrol engine from Italy that doesn't have a note to be reckoned with. Not so with the Germans. The German exhaust note, even when tuned to the verge of catastrophic failure, and on almost any engine you car to mention is gruff, and flat, and coarsely mechanical. Never rough-sounding, the tones of the Deutschemann will invariably be strangely deep, lacking the characteristic wail of their Italian cousins. Some sporty, many decidedly plain, the German selection is a highly mixed bunch. That said, it wouldn't be fair to continue without mentioning the 5-pot units of Audi fame, they sing with the best of them. Likewise the 6-pot from the BMW stable, though still oddly mechanistic sounding, will bellow mournfully all the way up the revs until they result in the staccato cheer of the limiter kicking in. The VTEC units and motorcycles of Japan will, if encouraged, scream rather than sing, but the effect is more or less the same so we'll give them a free pass. As you can see when a manufacturer has a solid grounding to work with, there are are plethora of different and fantastic noises to be created by the simple act of suck, squeeze, bang, blow.

Which brings me to the sensitive subject of Ford, no wait, wait, wait....I know I know. Look, I'll be the first to admit that the BDA engine is the probably best sounding engine ever built. There are fast Fords too, from ages past, with notes so haunted and wounding you'd swear it was an injured animal. BUT. Of late, and particularly since dropping the 5-pot, things have been getting a little.....quiet. The 3-cyl should have had a thoaty, spitty little cackle. Like distant gunfire. It should have had a rorty, snorty induction sound to piss off the big boys. Instead it got a placid little growl and a little too much wheel-spin in 1st. Not one of the four-pot blocks has a tone worth writing home about, and that includes the RS Fords! Muted by silencing and turbos, the note from the outside is hardly inspiring, and once it makes its way through a million layers of sound deadening inside there's little more than a gentle thrum like an outboard motor. Apparently aware of this Ford have decide to tackle this problem with what can only be described as a travesty, an abomination, a thing that should not be. An unholy alliance between media and automotive technologies. They have piped the sound of the engine into the cabin, augmented it digitally and pumped it through the speakers...Sigh.

Firstly, the speakers can never produce the quality of bass and vibration that a true engine exhaust will. Not unless you upgrade the stereo so much that you might as well spend the extra money developing the car more instead. Secondly, when the sound is transmuted through an amplifier it will lose something of its original quality and begin to sound a little unreal, to the extent that it would be as confusing to the ear as a highly realistic simulation. Its called the uncanny valley and what it means is this. If you make sculpture that is fairly unrealistic and then continue to improve it incrementally, never quite reaching perfection in terms of shape, colour, textures, the lot, then at first the eye will see the improvement but when it gets nearer and nearer to perfection suddenly that realism will evaporate. Its only at the point that the human senses can barely detect any difference at all again that it seems convincing again. On a graph this is shown with a line representing perceived-realism which climbs steadily towards the top before a brief and sudden detour all the way down and back up again right near the end.

This is important because almost whenever companies try this trick of recreating sounds to augment the ones already present, they never quite pull it off. Nissan have tried, Ford too also did it on the F-150 pickup. Many people add it as a mod so they can fool people into thinking they have better kit than they in fact can afford to insure or have skills to drive. There is only one reason to have this fitted, and its the same reason most of those modders do it, and coincidentally it is why Renault did it with the Clio Cup. Fun. If this were added PURELY as a way to have a laugh it would entirely make sense. Who wouldn't laugh at a tiny four cylinder engine sounding like a massive V8? Might even be nice to to know what it sounds like to be in the bigger sportier version of the car you drive ala BMW or AUDI.

Its a great novelty and a wicked toy but it's only works if you don't take it seriously. Because of your lowered expectations when used merely as a thing of joy, your suspension of disbelief is much greater. On the other hand, if you are adding it in a serious, intentional attempt to improve interior noise, the more desperate for the desire for it to work, the less, in fact, it will. Renault knew this. Or they wouldn't have let you chose to have any number of sounds from completely incompatible cars. Ford on the other hand are basically trying to correct a mistake. Having been caught short without having done their homework they tried to cheat. Big mistake. Coupled with reliability issues and accusations of being less exciting that former generations of Fast Ford, they may have very nearly committed suicide with this one. It's only a mercy that It was a company who could stand the hit, I have no doubt they will bounce back, bigger and better than ever....probably. If they're looking for advice on how to regain lost cred' then I reckon they should drop me a line. I could tell 'em, same as I'm telling you.

Back when I were a lad, they all used to just put a 'Cherry Bomb' back-box back there. Maybe Ford should just try that next time...

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