Judging by comments and various rankings, Lexus LFA is considered by most people to be the best sounding car engine in the world.
To me it literally doesn’t sound like a car at all, but like a formula or a racing motorcycle, so…do people rank car sounds essentially by how much they sound like formulas?
My husband firmly believes that car engines should be as quiet as possible and that the loud “mufflers” some types use to try to make their cars sound like more than the car really is are totally obnoxious.
I find myself thinking that excessive pointless noise of that type (or the boom-car stereos) are a bad case of overcompensating for, shall we say, deficiencies in masculine attributes.
I am talking about petrolheads, if we are talking about regular boring family cars, then yes, less noise of any type is best, but if we are talking about racing cars on tracks and so on, then it makes no sense.
Oh, OK. Thought it was a more general car discussion, not just about the racing types, which I know nothing about. Shutting up now. 
Most folks are looking for a deep, throaty growl. F1 cars rev way too high, they have a whine.
Many cars now have electronic exhaust sound because their actual engines are so quiet and unappealing to the petrolheads. There are systems available for EVs as well.
There are basically two camps - the high-revving whine of a formula car type (generally outside the US) and the throaty, booming large displacement V8+ type (generally the US). You get some overlap in recent decades thanks to the import tuner/hot-hatch scene converting some people. Note that even though the movie is all about the import scene, the Fast and the Furious has Dom loving good ol’ Murican muscle to broaden appeal.
So, the Lexus LFA is so admired because it appeals to both camps, being a high-revving, large-displacement V10. It sounds pretty good, but to me the Italians are still tops at exhaust tuning (even my old Fiat 500 sounded nice, stock).
The new corvette has lots of noise canceling and sound enhancements added on. They wanted to make the engine sound even more throaty than it already was to meet drivers expectations and needed to cancel some low end frequencies so you could actually hear the audio system.
Electric vehicles are using a lot of cancellation and enhancements because they are too quite and road noise becomes an issue.
Watching F1 qualifying the other day at the hair stylist-shocked to the core by how low and muted the engines now sound.
I call them fart cans for a reason.
A couple months ago I was at a stop light in the outside lane of a city street with the windows down. The light changed and I moderately accelerated in my Accord. As I did I hear this obnoxiously loud engine working its way through at least three gear changes. I start looking around trying to figure where it’s coming from. After several moments I see in the outside mirror someone “passing” me, making ten times the sturm und drang for a 3-mph advantage.
Until they have at least the option of going Bra-a-a-ap! when you tromp on the throttle, EVs are not going to appeal to a large segment of the populace.
A well tuned car engine should purr like a 3500 pound kitten.
The by far best sounding race car engine is the 1970 Porsche 917 12 cylinder. Watch the film Le Mans and you will understand.
An open header blg block Chevy has the right growl, but it isn’t the scream of the flat 12 Porsche.
A top fuel hemi isn’t a sound you hear as much as you feel. When the drivers “stomp on the loud pedal” it’s like you’re inside an earthquake. Your whole body vibrates in sync with the engine. The sound tries to drive your heart rate.
How an engine sounds at idle is a result of aggressive cam profiles that are designed for peak performance at certain engine rpms. They can sound as if they can barely idle at all. The Chevy truck at 1 minute into the video is a good example.
Now I’m wondering what some of the non-traditional racing car engines sounded like. Engines such as:
1906 Stanley Steamer Rocket
1952 Cummins Diesel Special (Indianapolis 500)
1967 Turbine-powered Indianapolis 500 car.
Heinlein once observed that the signature of good engineering is that it’s perfectly quiet.
I agree with him. It takes energy to make all that noise.
That about sums up Heinlein’s writing.
Like a jet at idle and like a whoosh going around the track.
I miss the old school muscle cars where the noise came from the carbs and headers under the hood. You could keep the mufflers quiet and still hear the power of the engine. But the flat plain crank engine in the Shelby engine is supposed to be a good sports car sound.
Though it takes energy from the crankshaft to overcome exhaust back pressure, all the more so in performance applications.
Not saying well-engineered engines should be that noisy, but if your motor produces, let’s call it 1 megawatt of power, of what consequence a few hundred or thousand watts of loud noise?
He must’ve thought the Saturn V was a piece of crap then.