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I'm not a car guy, so I used to think such ear-damaging decibels were necessary for performance but have since learned it's not required even for ultra-high per

I'm not a car guy, so I used to think such ear-damaging decibels were necessary for performance but have since learned it's not required even for ultra-high performance road cars that can go >200 mph. While a 12 cylinder Lamborghini Aventador is louder than a Hyundai, when both are idling at a stop light, it's actually barely louder from 100 feet away. And yet people with real supercars almost never modify them to be louder than stock. My wife is a serious car girl and drives her beloved McLaren well enough to be in the top five on amateur days at Sonoma Raceway. She's taught me that different supercars each have their own signature sound and to her it'd be sacrilegious to mess with such iconic perfection. :-) She's in a club of other supercar owners that puts on a huge charity car show where members bring over $100M of exotics - and none of those cars are nearly as loud as the sonic assault from one of the hopped up $10k rust buckets that occasionally pulls up next to my wife at a stop light and makes our ears bleed revving their engine. They always want to race "the cute girl in the McLaren" but she never takes the bait. When I asked why, she just scoffed that they're all bark and no bite. Plus she has no idea if the driver is race-trained, if their rust-bucket is even safe to be near at high-speeds or if they have insurance. Her favorite line about engine noise is from when she was picking up her car at the McLaren factory in England. While track-testing it with one of the race engineers, he joked "as engineers, we see excess noise as embarrassing because it's wasted horsepower we failed to transfer to the axle."

whackernews 5mo ago
The only thing I can really think of is a turbo Anti Lag System that you can get in top-end consumer cars like Mercedes AMGs. It’s that popping you hear when coming off the throttle, you’ll also hear it in rally cars. The funny thing is, the same popping can happen with any car if the timing is off so you sometimes get kids driving around with misfiring engines cause it “sounds cool” even though their car might not even have a turbo fan! It’s one of those things that if they were actually passionate about these machines they’d know they look like idiots, but they’re not so they do.
- marklubi 5mo ago
  The popping sounds from a turbo car is from the wastegate (whistling sound for a blow off value) when the system is releasing pressure from the turbo that was built up. It prevents over compression that would damage the engine.
  - whackernews 5mo ago
    I’m not talking about a dump valve, I’m talking about an ALS as I’ve mentioned. This is where the engine timing is delayed which results in some combustion to happen in the exhaust (hence literal pops). This is used to keep the turbo spooled by MAINTAINING pressure across the system. It’s a performance system. If your dump valve is popping I think there’s something wrong! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilag_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilag_system
red-iron-pine 5mo ago
> And yet people with real supercars almost never modify them to be louder than stock. people with real supercars don't have anything to prove, nor any reason to want more attention. if anything, they want less attention. esp. from the random pleb on the road. the existence of the car itself is enough. and that's before the muscle car sound purist that the parent poster alludes to.
- bradlys 5mo ago
  This is a weird take. Has anyone here been to Miami or LA? I’ve known a lot of people with supercars. Quite a few want the attention. If they didn’t - they would drive a different car. Very few are getting them for performance reasons. If they just wanted a performance car then they’d probably just get an open wheel.
  - Balgair 5mo ago
    When I first moved to LA, I remember thinking that it was so strange for all these people to have these really high end cars with like 700 HP in them, all to sit in traffic all day long. Like, why bother? Then I sat in LA traffic all day long in early September in 100+ heat, and I looked over and saw some old bitty in a very nice Bentley. Not a drop of sweat on her, couldn't hear a horn honking if she tried, music was probably perfect quality, seat was probably massaging her the whole ride home. That's when I finally got it. It's not the engine that mattered to her.
    - mrandish 5mo ago
      > It's not the engine that mattered to her. People into ultra-luxury car brands have a saying something like "The person who pulls up to a five star hotel in a Rolls Royce has a huge suite but the person who pulls up in a Bentley owns the hotel." :-)
  - mrandish 5mo ago
    > Quite a few want the attention. Through the supercar club my wife belongs to we've now met dozens of supercar owners and from that sample I'd say it's roughly a Pareto split. For about 20% the status signaling and attention is the major feature while the other ~80% own the car for the driving performance and enjoy the look aesthetically but would prefer if it looked like a minivan to everyone else. There's also a practical consideration because a few people drive like idiots around supercars. I've been with my wife on the highway and had cars race up and start weaving dangerously in the lane next to us because the driver was shooting video of our car. The ~20% focused on status do sort of cluster around a type. The signaling extends to clothes, jewelry, etc being overtly blingy. As a group they're more likely to do things like peel out at stop lights and drive faster than the flow of traffic. The car they own also tends to be at the bottom of the supercar range, something like a Huracan, which is technically a Lamborghini but internally based on an Audi R8. It's a nice car but my wife says (privately to me)... "Dude, just get the Audi version. Same car. Less money and the service is better." In general, my sense is the majority of the club are passionate car enthusiasts who feel the 'status' guys (it's always guys) give supercar owners a bad rep and just roll their eyes at the attention-seeking behavior. One time when a car meet was ending, we were talking with a knowledgeable older gentleman from England. We discovered he'd been a super-licensed race driver in F3 a couple decades ago and as he was explaining the finer points of wheel-loading in low-speed corners to my wife, one of 'those guys' in a Huracan loudly peeled out of the parking lot. As the smoke was clearing, the gentleman glanced over and sniffed "The machine was engineered to accelerate without losing traction but one does need to possess a modicum of skill." :-)

whackernews 5mo ago

The only thing I can really think of is a turbo Anti Lag System that you can get in top-end consumer cars like Mercedes AMGs. It’s that popping you hear when coming off the throttle, you’ll also hear it in rally cars. The funny thing is, the same popping can happen with any car if the timing is off so you sometimes get kids driving around with misfiring engines cause it “sounds cool” even though their car might not even have a turbo fan! It’s one of those things that if they were actually passionate about these machines they’d know they look like idiots, but they’re not so they do.

marklubi 5mo ago
The popping sounds from a turbo car is from the wastegate (whistling sound for a blow off value) when the system is releasing pressure from the turbo that was built up. It prevents over compression that would damage the engine.
- whackernews 5mo ago
  I’m not talking about a dump valve, I’m talking about an ALS as I’ve mentioned. This is where the engine timing is delayed which results in some combustion to happen in the exhaust (hence literal pops). This is used to keep the turbo spooled by MAINTAINING pressure across the system. It’s a performance system. If your dump valve is popping I think there’s something wrong! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilag_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilag_system

red-iron-pine 5mo ago

> And yet people with real supercars almost never modify them to be louder than stock. people with real supercars don't have anything to prove, nor any reason to want more attention. if anything, they want less attention. esp. from the random pleb on the road. the existence of the car itself is enough. and that's before the muscle car sound purist that the parent poster alludes to.

bradlys 5mo ago
This is a weird take. Has anyone here been to Miami or LA? I’ve known a lot of people with supercars. Quite a few want the attention. If they didn’t - they would drive a different car. Very few are getting them for performance reasons. If they just wanted a performance car then they’d probably just get an open wheel.
- Balgair 5mo ago
  When I first moved to LA, I remember thinking that it was so strange for all these people to have these really high end cars with like 700 HP in them, all to sit in traffic all day long. Like, why bother? Then I sat in LA traffic all day long in early September in 100+ heat, and I looked over and saw some old bitty in a very nice Bentley. Not a drop of sweat on her, couldn't hear a horn honking if she tried, music was probably perfect quality, seat was probably massaging her the whole ride home. That's when I finally got it. It's not the engine that mattered to her.
  - mrandish 5mo ago
    > It's not the engine that mattered to her. People into ultra-luxury car brands have a saying something like "The person who pulls up to a five star hotel in a Rolls Royce has a huge suite but the person who pulls up in a Bentley owns the hotel." :-)
- mrandish 5mo ago
  > Quite a few want the attention. Through the supercar club my wife belongs to we've now met dozens of supercar owners and from that sample I'd say it's roughly a Pareto split. For about 20% the status signaling and attention is the major feature while the other ~80% own the car for the driving performance and enjoy the look aesthetically but would prefer if it looked like a minivan to everyone else. There's also a practical consideration because a few people drive like idiots around supercars. I've been with my wife on the highway and had cars race up and start weaving dangerously in the lane next to us because the driver was shooting video of our car. The ~20% focused on status do sort of cluster around a type. The signaling extends to clothes, jewelry, etc being overtly blingy. As a group they're more likely to do things like peel out at stop lights and drive faster than the flow of traffic. The car they own also tends to be at the bottom of the supercar range, something like a Huracan, which is technically a Lamborghini but internally based on an Audi R8. It's a nice car but my wife says (privately to me)... "Dude, just get the Audi version. Same car. Less money and the service is better." In general, my sense is the majority of the club are passionate car enthusiasts who feel the 'status' guys (it's always guys) give supercar owners a bad rep and just roll their eyes at the attention-seeking behavior. One time when a car meet was ending, we were talking with a knowledgeable older gentleman from England. We discovered he'd been a super-licensed race driver in F3 a couple decades ago and as he was explaining the finer points of wheel-loading in low-speed corners to my wife, one of 'those guys' in a Huracan loudly peeled out of the parking lot. As the smoke was clearing, the gentleman glanced over and sniffed "The machine was engineered to accelerate without losing traction but one does need to possess a modicum of skill." :-)