No note no soul ?
#43
#44
I believe that Chevrolet was the first car company to specifically use exhaust sound to sell cars. Less than a year after buying my new 1960 Corvette, I received in the mail a 45 rpm Chevrolet promotional record "The Sounds of a 1961 Corvette", featuring a ride with Zora Arkus Duntov, the Russian immigrant engineer known as the "Father of the Corvette" and designer of the legendary high-lift "Duntov cam". He's driving a '61 fuelie, with 283 cubic inch displacement, new aluminum heads, and and 315 HP @ 6,500 rpms, which was incredible for that era. Unfortunately, those aluminum heads tended to warp and very few originals still exist. Interesting how technology has advanced, with aluminum heads being used on almost every engine today. After listening to that record, I went to my local Chevy dealer, had them replace the stock oval mufflers with the "off-road" mufflers used on the fuelie and never listened to the radio again.
Here's the link to that recording: http://www.deansgarage.com/media/audio/61Corvette.mp3
Close your eyes and enjoy some aural sex!
Here's the link to that recording: http://www.deansgarage.com/media/audio/61Corvette.mp3
Close your eyes and enjoy some aural sex!
Stuart S, thanks so much for posting that link. I bought my wife a 61 'Vette 8 years ago. We kept it for just one year because it was just too hard for her to drive. We loved to look at it, but it was pretty miserable on the highway in the heat where we live. Like so many fun cars we've owned (E-Type, Alfas, and even a convertible Rabbit!), I wish I still had it, but there's only so much garage space. We sold the Vette and got a very fun Miata in its stead, which came with power everything, A/C, and a nice exhaust note, but the Vette's exhaust was really something special. Very nice to re-live it with that .mp3 file!
#46
Yeah, I know. But happy wife = happy life. My wife could barely steer it, her shoulder couldn't deal with the convertible top (no idea why anyone would ever put it up, but whatever), and I'm not sure what it looked like when it rolled off the factory line, but when we got it, our car had ZERO firewall insulation. Driving that beast around in 100+ heat was like riding around in a furnace because of all the heat transfer from the engine compartment. So it mostly just sat in the garage. And knock the Miata all you want; that car is a souped-up go-kart. That's fun with a capital 'F'. It's solid as a rock, and in seven years, it's been mechanically flawless.