Sounding off

But in this line of business, where cars have to be tested, and tested on launches where journalists are inevitably paired up for the drive, it happens. So what follows are merely observations, and should not be seen as condoning let alone endorsing what in almost any other arena I would regard as entirely twattish behaviour.

In truth I’d first noticed this phenomenon in a Ferrari F12 Berlinetta many years back. At the first sign of an open road, the discovery that said Fandango would put all 730bhp through its rear tyres in first gear without even a chirp from the tyres coincided with what can only be described as a yelp from the other side of the car. I think it started life as a simple Anglo-Saxon expletive, but by the time the message had negotiated its way through an army of frantically shunting synapses, it had become sufficiently downgraded to exist in time only as a short, soprano, well, there’s no better word than yelp.

All of which made me wonder, and I’ve kept a watchful eye – or, I should say, ear – on the sounds from across the transmission tunnel, or what passes for it, ever since. Because not all cars provoke the same sounds, despite similar potential.

Modern McLarens for instance. People don’t yelp in McLarens. I think it’s because they deploy their power more subtly than the Ferrari, providing thinking time for a more considered response from your hapless co-habitee. There’s definitely time to form a full word, but one that lends itself to a less staccato delivery than the most obvious candidate. In my experience, a popular choice is ‘Shiiiiiiiiit’ luxuriously elongating itself like a cat having a stretch after a good nap, all the way from around 4000-8000rpm.

It was a briefly fond hope that the whoosh for the first pair of consonants might coincide with and complement nicely the arrival of the twin-turbo boost pressure, but sadly the human brain doesn’t react that fast. But there’s always time to appreciate the parade of vowels delivered with ever increasing urgency all the way to the final ‘t’, presented with all the finality of a guillotine blade dropping as you finally lift.

The most interesting discovery of my investigation is that this scale of exclamation is not linear: it follows not at all that the faster the car, the louder and more alarmed the response will be. A lot of it is environmental. When I was young and stupid I was able to get non-car people to howl at my old Caterham, simply because even 135bhp in a half-tonne car sitting that close to the ground produced highly unexpected results. Or at least they did 35 years ago. At the other end of the scale I well recall in 1994 seasoned Autocar staffers queuing up for passenger laps of a test track in the McLaren F1 and hearing only quiet gibbers of utter incomprehension from either side of me.

In fact I’ve wondered for a while if there isn’t some sound curve I could create, plotting power-to-weight on the x-axis and volume on the y-axis. Because my theory is that after a certain point, people tend to get quieter, not louder. And, I further posit, that if you’re yelping, swearing or bleating, what you’re essentially doing is registering surprise in one form or another. Which is fair enough. But with the advent of four-wheel drive, sticky tyres and launch control into the supercar arena, passengers don’t actually feel surprised by the gut-wrenching traction that goes with it. Or if they do, it is so swamped as to be effectively muted. Because what they’re feeling now is something else: we call it fear.

Of course on one level they know they’re not in actual danger – or at least I hope so – but try telling that to your survival instinct. And when that kicks in, one of the first things it recognises is that the time for talking is over. What’s needed now is action. So instead of making pointless blurting sounds, they start to grab at things to hold onto (though hopefully not you). They’re actually quite quiet.

But there’s always the exception to prove the rule and if you’re sufficiently inadequate and sadistic to want to make your passengers both scream and reach for anything they can hang onto, you need that latest fiendish instrument of torture, simply known as an EV.

Plenty of electric vehicles will do the job, but probably none better than a Porsche Taycan Turbo S. It is different to conventional cars in how it delivers its performance in two distinct ways: firstly and obviously, it does so in ominous silence, a fact that is so disconcerting all by itself it makes you feel like howling just to fill the void. But what passengers never realise until it’s too late is that while even the most responsive of internal combustion engines need a few milliseconds to gather themselves, therefore inadvertently easing them into the experience, EVs don’t.

They go from nothing to everything at the speed of light. Literally. And that is when you hear the strangest sound of all. It’s a low grunting noise, like a fighter pilot straining to maintain adequate blood pressure during a sustained 6g turn. And what’s most strange about this noise is not the fact that it is neither scream, shriek or squeal, nor even that it’s a kind of guttural gurgling. No – it is that it’s coming from you. Your passenger? If they’d had any sense they’d have passed out long ago.