Ford is going to do something about the interior noise, I read in a press release. It will make cars even quieter with “aerodynamically shaped sound shields under the car” and perforated leather to absorb sound. It made hollow spaces smaller and tested 45 types of tires for noise. For the Kuga Hybrid, the brand put all jammers from suspension to door seals under the magnifying glass. Ford calls it the “whisper strategy.”
I take note of it with astonishment and interest. Every credit and every little bit helps, but in the eight years that I’ve been testing new cars, I rarely experience them as noisy – not even Fords. That time has been. In modern three-cylinder models, it is quieter than in S-classes of the eighties. I remember tearing to the IAA in Frankfurt in a one-liter Fiesta without a discord with cruising speeds of 160 and above. In the field of sound insulation, enormous steps have been taken with beneficial effects. The Ford PR itself does not bother about that either. It adds an educational state with peak volumes from Ford Anglia to Kuga Plugin. Measured at 50 kilometers per hour in third gear, these plummeted from 89 to 69 decibels in fifty years.
The astonishment is in this. There is a great misunderstanding about sound. In German car magazines you used to read about the “subjective hearing experience”, the phenomenon that cars seemed less quiet or quieter than the decibel measurement indicated. Well, I can explain that phenomenon. Noise pollution is not the sum of engine noise, wind and tire noise, however annoying that may be. It cannot be expressed in decibels. It is caused by tired sound, overloaded sound. Tired sound is like the groan of a body that has to exert disproportionate effort, the pain of impotence. And that problem is just not out of the world. It is even very topical. Especially (plug-in) hybrids suffer from it. Those cars combine an electric motor with an internal combustion engine, which of course has better four than six cylinders for economy. Even large plug-in SUVs such as the Range Rover P400e and the Volvo XC90 are therefore equipped with four-pits. They are sturdy turbo blocks with juicy powers, so far so good. On the other hand, the technology with heavy batteries and electric and internal combustion engine carries considerable weight. This is avenged by strong acceleration and overtaking, if the unmeasured electric motor can no longer pull the cart alone. Then you can hear those perfectly isolated cruising dead silent giants fighting for their lives in the distance with the muffled, stylish sound of a second-hand Golf. The absolute noise level is also negligible, but you still feel like a Shell shareholder in Corona times. In the otherwise excellent Audi Q5 Plugin that I drove last month, comfort and performance were not to be overlooked, the squeezed roar of the two-liter turbo at full throttle was the only disturbing factor. I understand very well why BMW equips the 7-series plugin with six-cylinder after a four-cylinder period. A sovereign car demands a sovereign sound. You may think that is childish, but the audience also wants something.
For the same reason, in real sports cars like a 911 GT3 or Alpine A110, the grating noise never disturbs. It only proves that the engines are up to their task. They proclaim the energy and superiority of the top classers in a healthy manner noblesse oblige should be silent. Disturbing noise overloaded sound. And the misery is; the better a car is insulated, the better noise is eliminated, the sharper you perceive the dissonances, even if you hardly hear them objectively speaking. No 45 tire test can change that. Fortunately, that two-liter in that huge Range Rover Plugin is very far away.