Car Engine Speakers!

[treitz3]

Having the real thing [a Corvette engine under the hood of my trusty ol' truck] this seems to me like a cheap gimmick and a waste of money complete with false illusions. It would drive me nuts to listen to that much noise, knowing full well that I might only be going 15 MPH. It reminds me of those little ricers you see running around with the huge "coffee can" exhaust. You turn to look and hope to see something fairly impressive and what you have is a loud car with the acceleration performance of a Yugo towing a school bus. What's the point?

Tom

[mep]

Having the real thing [a Corvette engine under the hood of my trusty ol' truck] this seems to me like a cheap gimmick and a waste of money complete with false illusions. It would drive me nuts to listen to that much noise, knowing full well that I might only be going 15 MPH. It reminds me of those little ricers you see running around with the huge "coffee can" exhaust. You turn to look and hope to see something fairly impressive and what you have is a loud car with the acceleration performance of a Yugo towing a school bus. What's the point?

Tom

I have never heard a dumpy car with a coffee can exhaust tip sound like anything but a 4 cyl engine making lots of racket.

[whart]

When they rebooted the Infiniti brand (remember, not much more than 10 years ago, it was essentially moribund, having lost the lux car battle with Lexus), suddenly I'm hearing minivans with formula 1 exhaust notes. You'd hear this thing winding up down the road, sounding like the wheels of hell had been unleashed onto a straight-away, and it was a soccer-mom doing 25 with the kids and the dog. Clever marketing.
Most frightening exhaust note - ever hear a 512 BB/LM?- its an oldish dog of a Ferrari, the street version wasn't even brought into the US by Ferrari- this in the days when DOT and EPA had ramped up, circa the early 1970's and cars made outside the US could not be brought in without a lot of horsing around with bumper height, lighting, side impact rigidity and the like. In fact, as far as I know, no Berlinetta Boxers were EPA/DOT compliant but had to be converted by third party shops to be brought into the U.S. Ferrari could have cared less. He had sold the company to FIAT a few years before and could concentrate on real racing cars.
Anyway, they made a racing car version. The street version was a giant pig of a car, heavy, low, Ferrari's answer to the Countach. It had quite a nice engine, although it was mounted too high, and too far back to be a mid-engine car. Sorta scary at the limit.
Well, not content to leave well enough alone, there were some pretty serious race car versions that got pumped out as well.
These were not street legal. The manifolds and exhaust pipes looked like a cross between Medusa and a Giger nightmare. These cars were not particularly fast, and at least in their day, probably did not win any races, although they were privateered later. (Puro- correct me please if wrong).
You must hear one start up though. I've heard alot of cars in my day, and the 512 BB/LM has the most frightening bark/thunder that I have ever heard. And that's before the driver starts pumping the throttle. It turns into the sort of noise that is both deep bass and scream at the same time- the sound you might associate with being a little too close to a jet engine for comfort. Highly recommended. (with earplugs).