The other day some kind of high performance car drove by the main road by our house. Sounded like a SBF in a Mustang. A newer one with a stick. The driver held it in gear so it was winding pretty high at 35mph. It was in perfect song, sounded great. Interesting that most hipo vehicles have an appealing exhaust note...at least to motorheads. Be it a flathead, Hemi, V-12 in a warbird or Harley. Almost all of them speak to our high octane hearts. The sound of the mechanical bits too. A super charger whine, solid lifters, headers or the bark of high compression. Sometimes I'll be cruising in my car long distance and never turn on the radio. Just listen to the exhaust symphony. Even though it's the dreaded Universal Street Rod Engine. It still sings. Are we sick or just ahead of the rest of the lemmings? What ever it is, intelligent design or just dumb luck it thrills my socks off when I hear those heavenly metal sounds.
I agree Seesko, something about that gets into your blood. I love the sounds of a flatty or a hemi cackle on nitro, but there is a video on Youtube of a '03 Mustang Cobra with Keene Bell huffer that is great. It has a supercharger whine like nothing I've ever heard. Makes the hair stand up on my neck. Almost as good as that high rev Y Block my Dad had with straights. Steven.
Nothing makes me smile more then the sound of someone banging out gears in a V8 car. All tho a couple weeks ago a B17, B24 and a P51 flew in formation over my shop on there way to the air show... I needed new pants.
back in the old days I had a genuine 1970 Chevrolet LT-1 in a Z/28. what a sweet sound those solid lifters made with the headers uncorked.
The other we were working on the new Mullins trailer when we heard a screamer hit the road, wind it up, make a quick mile or so pass, then back and silence. Turns out it was the guy around the corner doing his "usual" late night test run on one of his new Cobras (427 style) he is constantly building by order. Don't even know his name, he works in silence except on drive test nights.
You are not alone! I think the sound of a hot rod is half the thrill. A hot rod with quiet mufflers is hard to get excited about. At the Pleasanton show yesterday, some car that looked like a hot rod, but sounded like a new car with stock mufflers, drove by, and the guy in front of me just shook his head in disgust and looked back at me and said, "it's too quiet!!!", and I had to agree with him.
I think for me the biggest thrill is the cackle of a hemi backing down after a hard pull. even a older built 354 or 392 street version has that same familiar tone. Yep that's it...John
i had a weird experience a few years ago. i'm not an airplane guy, but first time i heard a pair of P-51 Mustangs fly over me it nearly put me in a trance for a week.
Vintage war birds are the shit. Been to a few airshows around here featuring the Confederate Airforce. Seen P-51s, P-40's , a De Havilland Mosquitto, lots of great planes at those shows. Man, that stuff will give ya goosebumps. One B-17 is awesome in itself, hard to imagine hundreds flying overhead on their way to blow the crap out of somebody. About 20 years ago I was working on a car in a parking lot, and a B1 bomber flew over my head doing just under the speed of sound on it's way to a low level high speed pass at an airshow. I didn't see it comming. Loudest sound I've ever heard-scared the crap outta me! Cars, trucks, planes if it roars it is all right by me.
I agree that we just like the sound. I would never put a radio in my 31. Nothing like an early morning cruise on a back road listening to the sound from the two glass packs. Even better with the headers open. For me it just doesn't get any better.
I've heard that the teenagers of the forties liked the sounds of the war-birds flying over and tried to get that same sound outta their hot rods. Theirs nothing like the sound of your rods pipes bouncing off the concrete hi-way barriers at speed. My rod has a radio but I couldn't hear it above the sound of my pipes so I never play it.
I love the sound too, but it's what goes with the sound, the feeling that you can feel when driving a hot rod, drag car, or even a road race car. Kind of like being connected directly to the car and feeling everything from the tires on the road to the motor twisting in it's solid motor mounts and when you shift the transmission you have that humming feeling in your hands. Also used to love the smell of fuel at the drags..................the smell of 100+ octane, nitro, or even methonal. Where have all the years gone!
You people should be ashamed, its noise pollution! Wont someone think of the children? For the love of god man, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
We are thinking of the children. We make ours rides so loud they can hear us coming and get the hell outta the street!
I've been thinking about this very thing. When the POWER TOUR went through here in JUNE, I met the current marketing director for LINGENFELDTER RACING . We had a conversation about what they've been up to. I showed him my next scheduled completed project (54 CHEVY) and we spoke briefly about the possibility of using one of their latest technological creations. He said "The days of radical camshafts and loud cars are over, we can make 700 horsepower in a car you can't even hear run!" But ...but...I'm not READY for them to be over!!! So if I build a car that sounds like a freakin PRO STOCKER and makes tons of power I'm STILL gonna get punked by some kid in his GTO graduation present?? It's just depressing! I'm with you guys on one thing for sure though. I can listen to the roller in the '55 all day and never even CONSIDER the radio or CD player!
Going to the drag races is such an overload on our motorhead brain and senses. Especially the top fuel cars. The smell of nitro and burning rubber, When they start those monsters. BRUP!!! The burn outs. And that 4-1/2 second charge that sounds and feels like something not of this world. We dun no stinkib' drugs. God I love it.
If you love the sounds of an engine, you would love Bonneville. The sound of a piston engine at 200 mph screaming across the salt can't be descibed. I love it.
when my kid was five he could dismantle all of the front sheet metal of my 33 chev, he needed a socket and some help with the big chunks,but he got it done!I do think of the children,I would hate for them to miss out on premature hearing loss....and track burgers,god bless track burgers!
Sometimes something stands out from the crowd of Mustangs with Flowmasters and hopped-up Dodge Pickups..the other day something was coming up fast behind really singing a sweet note, I'm thinkin what is that? a 61 Chevy with a 409? whats that bad ass noise? zoom..an older Moto-Guzzi Le-Mans with open pipes rips by, Man that thing sounded sweet..A buddy came draggin home a 54 Kaiser Golden Dragon two one-barrels on a flathead six with a Paxton supercharger, can't wait to hear that one..yeah its a sickness few people understand, I like to stand behind the pipes of my 520 Caddy engine and just feel the rumble in your stomach....
Premature hearing loss and track burgers!!!!! Mmmm. Track burgers. HHAAAAHAHAHAAAHHAAAA!! Very well said.
I remember the B 36's flying out of March AFB Riverside in the 50,s.You would hear the windows rattling before you heard them 3500 hp radials singing. Whatta sight and sound.
I can't stand today's cars that sound like vacuum cleaners. The only thing you hear is the cooling fans on the little electric motors that drive all the creature comforts. I've come to associate that background hum with a sort of total-institution controlled environment like a luxury prison or (perhaps more aptly) an upmarket insane asylum. That's an interesting question of aesthetics. I'm not very keen on the idea of intrinsic beauty: I think aesthetic approbation arises from resemblance to something that fits into one's philosophy of life as being desirable. Thus, while ancient Greek systems of proportion came from how they went about setting a building out on the ground with ropes and pegs, later observers associated the resulting unmistakable look with ancient Greek ideals of civilization and democracy and reason and whatever, so that by the 17th century conceptions of architectural beauty were defined by resemblance to ancient Greek methods of surveying. Not that there's anything wrong with this, as long as you know it's happening. Of course the loose, nuts-and-bolts-in-a-coffee-can idle of a big-cam V8 grabs me by the gut (as does a lot of other sounds) but it's more than that. It's a flag, too, a symbol of my insistence on retaining my own moral agency, of aspiring to personal independence and consummateness, to be able rather than privileged. It's the sound of something I can engage with because its nature is to be susceptible to engagement. Vacuum-cleaner cars aren't susceptible to engagement. They're susceptible to being left alone because the mechanism I've ostensibly bought actually still belongs to the manufacturer. I hate that.
The Jalopy Journal
