Tech Focus: Would the noise from a car make you buy it? I would.

I’ve decided to work harder today (and hopefully for the rest of my career). The reason being that recently, a Brabus versioned SL 55 AMG zipped by on the opposite side of the road and the driver basically let it rip. The sound emanating from the tailpipes or engine was absolutely mind blowing extra loud BRRAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPP.

It is exactly a cross between a NASCAR V8 and a World War II fighter plane. I suppose the engineers at AMG must have conveniently forgot about drive-by noise regulations when they designed this engine and exhaust system. I suppose when you can afford one of these, you wouldn’t be bothered about neighbours complaining that your car is noisy and disturbs their 6 month old baby’s nap. You’d just buy over the whole surrounding neighbourhood or buy a 10,000 acre estate somewhere in Sungai Buloh. The police won’t even bother you unlike the time when you once owned a Proton Saga with a hundred Ringgit ‘meriam buluh’ muffler. And as such, you can make the SL55 wail in graceful abandon, without a care in the world.

Some cars produce noise that’s irritating and outright loud without an ounce of character in them. Some produce a sound as if the Angels had come down from Heaven and blessed the engine and its exhaust pipes with their harps. Some produce a sound as if a gigantic beast had awoke and now wants to eat everything it its path. However, it is usually the first case that happens to be in abundance around here instead of the second and third situation. We get the sound of mosquitos and the sound of a hollow tin can rattling around in most cars. The mosquito like sound usually comes from a Perodua Kancil with a RM95 muffler from the shops proclaiming ‘murah, tarak tipu punya’. You pay el-cheapo money for this crappy irritating sound. And it does not make a 3 cylinder Kancil engine sound like half a Porsche 911 flat 6. This is because we all know that in order to get a decent sounding car, (or a decent handling car, or a decently characterful car etc. etc) you’d have to pay through your bleeding nose for something like that if you want it brand new.

The thing that limits the ownership of a soulful sounding car in Malaysia is the same as the ownership of any soulful looking or a neat handling car. The reason is that these cars usually cost a whole lot more than those anodyne cars you see everywhere. It is also because manufacturers who sell basic low end cars are too busy working out numbers on how to milk as much profit from them rather than spend money on developing interesting handling, loads of power, a decent driving position or even the tuning the exhaust system or intake system of a car to make it sound nicer. But sometimes, it is advancement that makes an engine quieter.

We shall look at good sounding affordable cars in this article. The problem of cost also limits most mass produced cars to having a 4 cylinder in line engine. An in-line 4 is very cost effective when it comes to piston displacement and the power it produces. With the correct camshaft profiles, correct intake and exhaust as well as ignition and camshaft timing an in-line 4 could produce an efficient 100bhp per 1000cc. We take note of the Mitsubishi MIVEC and the Honda VTEC engines for this. The power outputs these engines make are astounding. But, I’ve experienced that a correctly tuned VTEC or i-VTEC engine from the year 2006 will not sound like the step-up VTECs from 1990. You won’t feel a rush or a change in induction like in those days as it’s more linear nowadays. Less character you may say, but there are no gaps in the powerband like before. There is less of a blood curling howl in the latest DC5 Integra than in an early DA6 Integra. I suppose it’s when everything is balanced out it goes quiet. It may however still have a somewhat unique shriek due to the fact that the Honda Twin Cam VTEC revs to at least 8,500rpm where most cars find it a struggle to reach 6,500rpm. The extra 2,000rpm or so makes a lot of difference when it comes to induction roar and exhaust note.

Some may say that it isn’t the way to make a car sound good but these people have forgotten the induction roar of those old 4 cylinder cars running 2 or more carburettors. Honda once in the late 60s came out with their S800 which ran 4 Mikuni carbs and a 9,500rpm redline. As such, one of the pleasures of owning a high revving Honda or Mitsubishi would be gunning the engine right up to the redline, knowing that you are one of the few with engines (in cars) that can howl and shriek like a Pontianak with some belacan shoved up her arse. However, you need at least RM195,000 to fork out for a Jap unregistered reconditioned Integra DC5 for the pleasure (if one can still be found that is). Of course second hand EG series Civics from 1992-1996 could be bought, but they aren’t worth paying up to RM35,000.00 for one and hard to get financing also.

However, note that with the Yamaha designed Toyota VVTL-i 1.8liter engine found in the Celica or the MRS you won’t find any outrageous noises anywhere. Being a Toyota engine, it performs like a grown up engine should. Quietly doing its job with a very, very normal twin cam noise. Nice, but not as good as you’d expect. Somehow, you’d buy the car to enjoy driving it. Sound is secondary to a Toyota. In fact, you’ve never once heard anyone say that they bought a Toyota for the sound.

Now we come to flat 4s, a rare sort of configuration once used on Lancias and Alfas as well as the VW Beetle. Only Subaru carries on with this configuration nowadays. Porsches are 6 cylinders and BMW makes 2 cylinder boxers for their bikes. If you noticed the newer Subaru Imprezas are pretty thrummy instead of burbly due to the fact that it has equal length manifolds which balance the pulses of the exhaust gasses. In the early days, you get Imprezas with manifolds having very unequal lengths from each bank of cylinders. This causes the exhaust pulses to be unbalanced and therefore a burble as nice as a V8 engine. With each improvement, the Subaru EJ series comes closer to being as interesting as a workmanlike drone of a Mitsubishi 4G63 engine, a classic in its own right, but a very electrical appliance sort of drone when it comes to making noise.

However, at this moment, there still is a semblance of character in its exhaust note compared to other 4 cylinder cars. The Subaru Impreza/Forester and the in some ways the Subaru Legacy are the only 4 cylinder cars that sound different and good nowadays. No one utilises flat 4s anymore. I suppose it does cost more to produce with separate cylinder banks and all, but the price for maintaining this kind of engine makes it worthwhile as it makes it have a dozen times more soul than the run of the mill in-line 4s. Expect to pay RM115, 000.00 for a recently new Subaru Impreza WRX bug eye from 2000-2001. This version still has a very single beat sound compared to the later models as with the 2004 revision (applied E onwards) the manifolds are of equal length.

The next affordable type of engine that produces decent noise would be the Alfa Romeo 4 cylinder in-line engines, with its twin spark cylinder heads and variable cam timing. This covers both the newer JTS engines as well as the earlier fully Alfa Twin Spark ones. The Alfa trademark is a very throaty growl. The Italian engineers/designers seem to have perfected the art of making everything they touch from the look of the car to the sound of the car seem just nice. However, the only problem of owning an Alfa is that you may be afraid of driving it due to the fact that something may break and cost a bomb while you’re driving it. This puts a spanner to the cogs to most people’s plans of buying one. Even if they do buy one, they hardly take it out of Kuala Lumpur and hit the B-roads. Some don’t even leave their neighbourhood in the first place. One Alfa I’d suggest anyone to buy is the one my cousin bought, a 147 1.6 Twin Spark manual from 2001. It doesn’t have the selespeed gearbox, therefore you won’t die a pauper trying to maintain it. It’s been pretty reliable throughout the one year my cousin has owned his and it still looks great. The market price for a 1.6 is around RM60,000.00.

After this the only car that sounds decent for around RM100,000 would be a Proton Perdana with its V6 engine. But you won’t want to pay 100k for a car that’s been in production for so long and when there’s gearbox problems cropping up, and a flooded second hand market of Perdanas. You wouldn’t want one anyway. But a V6 sounds good nonetheless. And if you want one, get a recently used one from the year 2004-2005. It’ll sell for around RM60-80,000. But the thing is, you may need a few thousand more fixing up the gearbox if the previous owner hadn’t experienced the gearbox problem first. It’s a catch 22 situation with this car.

There are other cars that have a vocal engine, but you will be looking at cars that are second hand if you want them cheap. 6cylinder BMW 3 series E36s and E46s as well as the 5 series (all of them at the age where things start to go wrong and cost BMW money to fix), the 5 cylinder Fiat Coupes (with tons of problems to go with it), certain old Nissans with the RB20, 25 or 26 engines, the newer VQ series V6 from Nissans in the Cefiros (fwd and dull to drive).

The thing is, cost is always the constraint, and if cost wasn’t a constraint, the top 5 list of current production cars to have just because of the noise they make would be as follows (I shall limit to the cars that I have had the pleasure of hearing them sing):

1. Mercedes Benz SL55 AMG

2. Ferrari F430

3. Bentley Continental GT/GTC

4. BMW M5

5. Range Rover Sport (basically that would make the new Jaguar XK coupes sound fantastic and its cousin the Aston Vantage which utilises the same engine as desirable)

So, should we choose a car to own for the noise that it makes? I suppose some cars like the SL55 AMG would make me say yes.