2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon: An Exercise in Lunacy, WIRED
Dodge Makes a Car So Powerful, It Can Do Wheelies
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Dodge Makes a Car So Powerful, It Can Do Wheelies
Slide: one / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
Slide: two / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
Slide: three / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
Slide: four / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
Slide: five / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
Slide: six / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
Slide: seven / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
Slide: eight / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
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Walk the floor of any car demonstrate and you’ll find the future neatly organized according to buzzwords. Autonomous. Electrified. Connected. Collective. The folks at Dodge, tho’, use fancy another buzzword. More. As in more power. More torque. And more wheelies.
Yeah. More wheelies.
Dodge, a company with scant interest in subtlety, topped even its own absurdity with the two thousand eighteen Dodge Challenger SRT Demon. Put aside the searing color, the enormous scoop, and the fact this thing runs on equal parts testosterone and gasoline, and revel in the lunacy of eight hundred forty horsepower.
Think about that for a moment. For the relatively bargain-basement price of, well, Dodge hasn’t said yet, you get a ‘Murican-made muscle car with forty horsepower more than the most powerful Ferrari ever. This thing will do the quarter in 9.65 seconds and hit sixty mph in Two.Three seconds. Those are supercar numbers.
Nuttier still, this thing does wheelies. Jam on the gas and you’ll go Two.92 feet with the front wheels airborne. No, indeed. Dodge invited the Guinness World Records people to see it, and they showcased up with a gauze measure. Turns out that’s a world record for production cars.
Few people can treat that kind of insanity, of course, which is why everyone who buys a Demon spends a day at the Bob Bondurant School of High-Performance Driving, where Vin Diesel will rail shotgun shouting, “I live my life a quarter mile at a time!” (OK, that last part is a joke. But you can see it happening.)
No word yet on just how many Demons Dodge plans to build, but given that it had to dual its production run of the 707-horsepower Challenger and Charger Hellcat models, you can bet it’ll sell every single one of them. Because who doesn’t want more wheelies? That’s a future anyone can get behind.
Share
- Author: Jack Stewart. Jack StewartTransportation
- Date of Publication: 03.24.17. 03.24.17
- Time of Publication: 7:30 am. 7:30 am
Witness sixty Years of Glorious F1 Race Car Evolution
Slide: one / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: The Formula one World Drivers’ Championships formally kicked off in 1950, but the front engined cars of the day would be unrecognizable to a modern viewer. Alfa Romeo predominated the inaugural season. This is the British Grand Prix, at Silverstone. Alamy
Slide: two / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: By the mid 1950s, regulations had embarked to limit engine size, however teams could use turbo or superchargers. In one thousand nine hundred fifty eight year, fresh rules meant every car had to burn standard gasoline fuel, rather than the alcohol-based fuels they’d used before. This is Stirling Moss in Rob Walker’s Cooper at Goodwood. Getty Pictures
Slide: three / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: one thousand nine hundred sixty eight eyed aerodynamic effects used in a big way as teams spanked hefty wings on struts several feet high (seen here on a Rob Walker Racing Team Lotus in the German Grand Prix). “They stole the idea from American Can-Am races,” says motorsport historian Don Capps. It was also a particularly deadly year, claiming five drivers’ lives—the bosses banned the high wings and introduced other safety rules. Grand Prix Photo/Getty Pictures
Slide: four / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: The 1970s marked the begin of Formula one as fans know it today, and the technological innovations came thick and swift. Mario Andretti won the one thousand nine hundred seventy eight Formula one World Drivers Championship in this Lotus seventy nine which used ‘ground effect’ aerodynamics, effectively turning the underside of the car into the equivalent of the yam-sized wing for gobs of downforce. Don Heiny/Getty Pics
Slide: five / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: Renault’s RS01 was the very first modern racer to use a turbocharger, albeit regulations had permitted them for over a decade. Initial reliability problems earned it the name the “yellow teapot” for the frequent clouds of white smoke. It proved itself in 1979, and other teams quickly adopted the turbo. Here it’s contesting in one thousand nine hundred seventy eight in Long Beach, California. Getty Pictures
Slide: six / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: John Watson’s one thousand nine hundred eighty one McLaren MP4/1 may not look revolutionary, but it was the very first to be made as a single carbon-fiber composite monocoque, rather than a metal chassis. That made the car unbelievably light, stiff and strong. Early on, other teams worried about its crash safety, but it quickly become the standard way to build a racecar. Getty Pics
Slide: seven / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: In one thousand nine hundred eighty three extreme ground effects had been fully banned, so Nelson Piquet’s Brabham BMW BT52, here at the Italian Grand Prix, used powerfully trimmed side pods, and a vapid underside. By now the cars were all running very thirsty turbo engines, so pit stops were re-introduced for refueling. They didn’t last long, and were banned again in 1984. Getty Pics
Slide: eight / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: It was all switch again in 1989. After several seasons of limiting boost pressure to attempt to rein in the insane power of F1 engines and make races safer and more entertaining, turbos were banned altogether. Naturally aspirated engines were back in, up to Three.Five liters, and eight to twelve cylinders. This is legendary driver Ayrton Senna in his McLaren MP4/Five at the one thousand nine hundred eighty nine British Grand Prix. Getty Photos
Slide: nine / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: Formula one had gone a decade without a fatality when F1 excellent Ayrton Senna, shown here in the Williams FW16, died in a crash at the one thousand nine hundred ninety four San Marino GP—after warning the banning of electronic driver’s aids would prove dangerous. His death sparked another round of power confinements and track adjustments. Mike Hewitt/Getty Pics
Slide: ten / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: By the late 2000s, the races were becoming boring to witness, thanks to evenly matched, reliable cars. So the bosses updated the regs yet again, reducing engine rev thresholds and permitting adjustable wings to switch aerodynamics mid-race This Ferrari F150, shown testing at Spain’s Ricardo Tormo Circuit, was one result. Paul Gilham/Getty Photos
Slide: eleven / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: two thousand fourteen marked a shift towards smaller engines (turbocharged 1.6-liters with six cylinders), but stronger use of the Kinetic Energy Recovery System. During braking, KERS stores energy by spinning up a flywheel, then releases it during acceleration to boost spectacle. Infiniti Crimson Bull Racing shows its fresh RB10 during day one of winter testing in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. Andrew Hone/Getty Pics
Slide: twelve / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: For the two thousand seventeen season, the concentrate is back on overtaking, with an unwinding of many of the aerodynamic confinements. F1’s head honchos want cars to be quicker through the corners, tho’ viewers aren’t coaxed that’ll make the races more arousing. The cars, like this one from reigning champions, Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport, are lower and sleeker, with much broader tires. Daimler
Slide: thirteen / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: What comes next? More evolution. In late 2015, McLaren showcased one view of the future, with the MP4-X. It’s electrical, charged by the sun, and drivers steer it by thought. It’s an extreme concept, but as the last six decades have demonstrated, Formula one tech doesn’t stand still for long. McLaren
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After four months off, the best drivers on the planet line up for the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne this weekend. Fans hoping to see something more than yet another processional behind reigning champs Mercedes might just see some excitement this year. A raft of fresh rules designed to mix things up will make for quicker lap times and, with luck, more overtaking.
The most demonstrable switch? Broader wings and tires, meant to improve downforce and maximize grip—which translates to higher cornering speeds. Those tweaks are the latest revisions to a sport where switch is the only constant. Engineers design fresh cars each year to suit the fresh rules that dictate damn near everything you can imagine, and a few things you can’t. The cars you’ll see line up in Melbourne look nothing like the superior Alfa Romeos from 1950, or even the cars that legend Jackie Stewart raced to victory in the 1960s and 70s. They’re longer, lower, and one hell of a lot quicker. Felipe Massa hit a jaw-dropping 226.3mph at the Mexican Grand Prix in 2015.
Some of the tech packed into the car Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton hopes takes him to a fourth title might even emerge in your rail one day. Active suspensions, sequential gearboxes, and stability control, are just some of the tech that’s trickled down from the pinnacle of motorsports.
Before launching into the two thousand seventeen championship, take a look at how F1’s race cars have switched over the decades, and where they could go from here.
- Author: Eric Adams. Eric AdamsTransportation
- Date of Publication: 03.23.17. 03.23.17
- Time of Publication: 9:00 am. 9:00 am
The Fight to Wrap Cheapo Cars in Luxurious Muffle
Luxury cars suggest all sorts of perks to generate oohs and aahs: gesture controls, rubdown seats, self-driving capabilities. But you’re unlikely to appreciate one key feature until it’s gone: muffle. High-end offerings from the likes of Mercedes-Benz and Lexus specialize in making their occupants feel cozy and insulated, even as massive engines propel them to Autobahn speeds.
In your cheapo car, meantime, sucking wind, humming tires, high-revving engines, and a hundred random stimulations conspire to make conversation a chore, harass the driver, and strain audio systems cranked up to mask the racket. That’s because the standard silencers–sound-absorbing insulation, pricey engineering, aerodynamic tricks, and sheer weight (stronger cars tend to be quieter)–are hard to budge down market.
But in latest years, automakers catering to the road-going hoi polloi have found fresh ways to lower the volume, particularly for hybrid and electrical vehicles that don’t have the benefit of an engine to mask other vehicle noises. The result: Economy cars now carry things like side mirrors that maneuver airflow away from your windows, suspensions that dial out road noise, expanding gauze that butt-plugs gaps, and frames to maneuver sound away from the car’s occupants–all developed with the help of mannequins with mics in their ears and giant spherical cameras that can “see” sound.
Turning Down the Volume
“[Noise, stimulation, and harshness] spectacle instantaneously and directly influences our customers’ perception of vehicle quality and value,” says Honda engineer Andrea Martin, who tackled the problem for the two thousand eighteen Odyssey minivan. “But it’s even more fundamental. Low and mid frequency noise levels can dramatically contribute to driver weariness, and higher frequency noise levels can also inhibit the capability to hear conversations in the vehicle.” You know what’s worse than a complaining kid? A kid shouting his complaints so he can be heard over that dang tire hum.
So Honda’s engineers commenced by adapting the platform from the Ridgeline pickup, with its improved rear suspension design that mitigates sound and stimulation at the source. They launched what Martin calls a “comprehensive sealing strategy,” deploying paint sealers, insulating burst foam, and gauze that expands when heated, so it fills gaps inbetween the welded bits.
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The team used acoustic glass and insulation, as well–two familiar tactics for premium cars that are now affordable enough for higher-volume products. Also trickling down: advanced engineering simulation technologies to design figure structures where sound and stimulation paths are diminished or eliminated. “These are all low-cost or cost-neutral opportunities that can be applied across an entire lineup,” Martin says.
In its battle against noise, Volkswagen relies on prevention. “The general treatment is not to reduce noise by extra insulation, but rather avoid the creation of any disturbing noise in the very first place through wise engineering,” says engineering rep Christian Buhlmann. For example, the automaker substituted the vapid firewall separating the engine compartment from the cabin in the fresh Golf Mk seven with a waffle-shaped one that absorbs stimulations.
The Germans designed the sideview mirrors to channel wind away from the windows. The underfloor panels direct airflow underneath the car straight from front to rear, eliminating the noisy turbulence that free-flowing air generates. This sort of panel, usually reserved for high-end sports cars, also reduces vehicle haul, a boon for efficiency.
Pinpointing the Squawk
Before they can get to the shushing, of course, engineers must sort out what’s squawking. Nissan deployed a multitude of laboratory and test-track strategies to pinpoint and measure sound coming from its fresh Titan pickup truck. They relied on “acoustic cameras” that create color-coded photos highlighting the noisiest areas of a cabin, dozens of microphones surrounding vehicle exteriors to assess framework and powertrain noise, and real-world testing across a multitude of road surfaces. (Tire design also contributes mightily to cabin acoustics, so the manufacturers work closely with tire makers to ideal the rubber compounds and tread design for each car.)
Nissan, which also folded in Bose acoustic noise canceling technology to the cabins of its Maxima, Murano, 370Z models, used that data to determine where to add insulation and body-sealing, as well as to design fresh hydraulic assets mounts. That alone dropped low-frequency stimulation by a utter ten decibels.
Inwards the World’s Largest Wind Tunnel
For its bid to quash noise in its fresh CX-5 crossover, Mazda deployed dozens of sensors–even sticking some in the in the “ears” of mannequins sitting in the vehicle. They did real world testing, too, with regular humans. “We found, for example, that at highway speeds the aerodynamic compels actually pulled the doors away from the car, letting in wind noise,” said Dave Coleman, Mazda’s chief of vehicle dynamics engineering. “So we created a deeper door seal to prevent that.”
Coleman’s team next added dampers on each strut to cancel out their acoustical footprint, inserted a sound blocker inbetween the back seat and the cargo cover, tucked the windshield wipers underneath the spandex hood to take them out of the slipstream, and added fabric to the naked metal surfaces inwards the car, so they don’t reflect noise up from the below. “Those metal surfaces essentially turn into loudspeakers,” Coleman says.
Even the sound that does make it through is now routed rearward instead of toward the front of the car, thanks to tweaks in the metal framework specifically for this purpose. All of this comes in addition to the effortless stuff–acoustic glass, tighter window channels, and more insulation behind door panels and in the poles.
The effort pays off: The CX-5 isn’t just quieter than its competitors, it feels a hair above its class. However things like the doors and seats don’t have the heft of those in fancier cars, the interior supplies the same blissful quietude you get in, say, an Audi Q7 or a Mercedes S-Class. Conversation is effortless, music is no longer a battle tactic. It’s a perk you can neither see nor hear, but one you’ll appreciate, no matter how much you paid for your car.
2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon: An Exercise in Lunacy, WIRED
Dodge Makes a Car So Powerful, It Can Do Wheelies
Get The
6 months for $Five – plus a FREE Portable
WIRED’s thickest stories, delivered to your inbox.
- Ten hours
“Such a blanket ban contributes to a growing protectionist trend in government technology procurement.” wrd.cm/2wBztiu
Go after Us
Don’t miss our latest news, features and movies.
We’re On
See what’s inspiring us.
Go after Us
Don’t miss out on WIRED’s latest movies.
Dodge Makes a Car So Powerful, It Can Do Wheelies
Slide: one / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
Slide: two / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
Slide: three / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
Slide: four / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
Slide: five / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
Slide: six / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
Slide: seven / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
Slide: eight / of eight . Caption: FCA US LLC.
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Gamergate Target Zoe Quinn Can Instruct Us How to Fight Online Hate
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An Insane Collection of Hollywood Props Is Up for Auction, From Conan’s Sword to Indy’s Whip
Walk the floor of any car display and you’ll find the future neatly organized according to buzzwords. Autonomous. Electrical. Connected. Collective. The folks at Dodge, however, use fancy another buzzword. More. As in more power. More torque. And more wheelies.
Yeah. More wheelies.
Dodge, a company with scant interest in subtlety, topped even its own absurdity with the two thousand eighteen Dodge Challenger SRT Demon. Put aside the searing color, the enormous scoop, and the fact this thing runs on equal parts testosterone and gasoline, and revel in the lunacy of eight hundred forty horsepower.
Think about that for a moment. For the relatively bargain-basement price of, well, Dodge hasn’t said yet, you get a ‘Murican-made muscle car with forty horsepower more than the most powerful Ferrari ever. This thing will do the quarter in 9.65 seconds and hit sixty mph in Two.Trio seconds. Those are supercar numbers.
Nuttier still, this thing does wheelies. Ram on the gas and you’ll go Two.92 feet with the front wheels airborne. No, indeed. Dodge invited the Guinness World Records people to see it, and they displayed up with a gauze measure. Turns out that’s a world record for production cars.
Few people can treat that kind of insanity, of course, which is why everyone who buys a Demon spends a day at the Bob Bondurant School of High-Performance Driving, where Vin Diesel will rail shotgun shouting, “I live my life a quarter mile at a time!” (OK, that last part is a joke. But you can see it happening.)
No word yet on just how many Demons Dodge plans to build, but given that it had to dual its production run of the 707-horsepower Challenger and Charger Hellcat models, you can bet it’ll sell every single one of them. Because who doesn’t want more wheelies? That’s a future anyone can get behind.
Share
- Author: Jack Stewart. Jack StewartTransportation
- Date of Publication: 03.24.17. 03.24.17
- Time of Publication: 7:30 am. 7:30 am
Witness sixty Years of Glorious F1 Race Car Evolution
Slide: one / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: The Formula one World Drivers’ Championships formally kicked off in 1950, but the front engined cars of the day would be unrecognizable to a modern viewer. Alfa Romeo predominated the inaugural season. This is the British Grand Prix, at Silverstone. Alamy
Slide: two / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: By the mid 1950s, regulations had began to limit engine size, tho’ teams could use turbo or superchargers. In one thousand nine hundred fifty eight year, fresh rules meant every car had to burn standard gasoline fuel, rather than the alcohol-based fuels they’d used before. This is Stirling Moss in Rob Walker’s Cooper at Goodwood. Getty Pictures
Slide: three / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: one thousand nine hundred sixty eight spotted aerodynamic effects used in a big way as teams smacked massive wings on struts several feet high (seen here on a Rob Walker Racing Team Lotus in the German Grand Prix). “They stole the idea from American Can-Am races,” says motorsport historian Don Capps. It was also a particularly deadly year, claiming five drivers’ lives—the bosses banned the high wings and introduced other safety rules. Grand Prix Photo/Getty Photos
Slide: four / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: The 1970s marked the embark of Formula one as fans know it today, and the technological innovations came thick and prompt. Mario Andretti won the one thousand nine hundred seventy eight Formula one World Drivers Championship in this Lotus seventy nine which used ‘ground effect’ aerodynamics, effectively turning the underside of the car into the equivalent of the giant wing for gobs of downforce. Don Heiny/Getty Pics
Slide: five / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: Renault’s RS01 was the very first modern racer to use a turbocharger, albeit regulations had permitted them for over a decade. Initial reliability problems earned it the name the “yellow teapot” for the frequent clouds of white smoke. It proved itself in 1979, and other teams quickly adopted the turbo. Here it’s rivaling in one thousand nine hundred seventy eight in Long Beach, California. Getty Photos
Slide: six / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: John Watson’s one thousand nine hundred eighty one McLaren MP4/1 may not look revolutionary, but it was the very first to be made as a single carbon-fiber composite monocoque, rather than a metal chassis. That made the car unbelievably light, stiff and strong. Early on, other teams worried about its crash safety, but it quickly become the standard way to build a racecar. Getty Photos
Slide: seven / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: In one thousand nine hundred eighty three extreme ground effects had been totally banned, so Nelson Piquet’s Brabham BMW BT52, here at the Italian Grand Prix, used powerfully trimmed side pods, and a vapid underside. By now the cars were all running very thirsty turbo engines, so pit stops were re-introduced for refueling. They didn’t last long, and were banned again in 1984. Getty Pics
Slide: eight / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: It was all switch again in 1989. After several seasons of limiting boost pressure to attempt to rein in the insane power of F1 engines and make races safer and more entertaining, turbos were banned altogether. Naturally aspirated engines were back in, up to Three.Five liters, and eight to twelve cylinders. This is legendary driver Ayrton Senna in his McLaren MP4/Five at the one thousand nine hundred eighty nine British Grand Prix. Getty Photos
Slide: nine / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: Formula one had gone a decade without a fatality when F1 superb Ayrton Senna, shown here in the Williams FW16, died in a crash at the one thousand nine hundred ninety four San Marino GP—after warning the banning of electronic driver’s aids would prove dangerous. His death sparked another round of power confinements and track adjustments. Mike Hewitt/Getty Pictures
Slide: ten / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: By the late 2000s, the races were becoming boring to witness, thanks to evenly matched, reliable cars. So the bosses updated the regs yet again, reducing engine rev boundaries and permitting adjustable wings to switch aerodynamics mid-race This Ferrari F150, shown testing at Spain’s Ricardo Tormo Circuit, was one result. Paul Gilham/Getty Pictures
Slide: eleven / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: two thousand fourteen marked a shift towards smaller engines (turbocharged 1.6-liters with six cylinders), but stronger use of the Kinetic Energy Recovery System. During braking, KERS stores energy by spinning up a flywheel, then releases it during acceleration to boost spectacle. Infiniti Crimson Bull Racing shows its fresh RB10 during day one of winter testing in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. Andrew Hone/Getty Photos
Slide: twelve / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: For the two thousand seventeen season, the concentrate is back on overtaking, with an unwinding of many of the aerodynamic confinements. F1’s head honchos want cars to be quicker through the corners, tho’ viewers aren’t wooed that’ll make the races more titillating. The cars, like this one from reigning champions, Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport, are lower and sleeker, with much broader tires. Daimler
Slide: thirteen / of thirteen . Caption: Caption: What comes next? More evolution. In late 2015, McLaren showcased one view of the future, with the MP4-X. It’s electrical, charged by the sun, and drivers steer it by thought. It’s an extreme concept, but as the last six decades have demonstrated, Formula one tech doesn’t stand still for long. McLaren
Related Galleries
Review: Nintendo Fresh 2DS XL
Gamergate Target Zoe Quinn Can Train Us How to Fight Online Hate
An Insane Collection of Hollywood Props Is Up for Auction, From Conan’s Sword to Indy’s Whip
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Review: Nintendo Fresh 2DS XL
Gamergate Target Zoe Quinn Can Instruct Us How to Fight Online Hate
An Insane Collection of Hollywood Props Is Up for Auction, From Conan’s Sword to Indy’s Whip
After four months off, the best drivers on the planet line up for the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne this weekend. Fans hoping to see something more than yet another processional behind reigning champs Mercedes might just see some excitement this year. A raft of fresh rules designed to mix things up will make for swifter lap times and, with luck, more overtaking.
The most demonstrable switch? Broader wings and tires, meant to improve downforce and maximize grip—which translates to higher cornering speeds. Those tweaks are the latest revisions to a sport where switch is the only constant. Engineers design fresh cars each year to suit the fresh rules that dictate damn near everything you can imagine, and a few things you can’t. The cars you’ll see line up in Melbourne look nothing like the superior Alfa Romeos from 1950, or even the cars that legend Jackie Stewart raced to victory in the 1960s and 70s. They’re longer, lower, and one hell of a lot swifter. Felipe Massa hit a jaw-dropping 226.3mph at the Mexican Grand Prix in 2015.
Some of the tech packed into the car Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton hopes takes him to a fourth title might even emerge in your rail one day. Active suspensions, sequential gearboxes, and stability control, are just some of the tech that’s trickled down from the pinnacle of motorsports.
Before launching into the two thousand seventeen championship, take a look at how F1’s race cars have switched over the decades, and where they could go from here.
- Author: Eric Adams. Eric AdamsTransportation
- Date of Publication: 03.23.17. 03.23.17
- Time of Publication: 9:00 am. 9:00 am
The Fight to Wrap Cheapo Cars in Luxurious Muffle
Luxury cars suggest all sorts of perks to generate oohs and aahs: gesture controls, rubdown seats, self-driving capabilities. But you’re unlikely to appreciate one key feature until it’s gone: muffle. High-end offerings from the likes of Mercedes-Benz and Lexus specialize in making their occupants feel cozy and insulated, even as massive engines propel them to Autobahn speeds.
In your cheapo car, meantime, deepthroating wind, humming tires, high-revving engines, and a hundred random stimulations conspire to make conversation a chore, harass the driver, and strain audio systems cranked up to mask the racket. That’s because the standard silencers–sound-absorbing insulation, pricey engineering, aerodynamic tricks, and sheer weight (stronger cars tend to be quieter)–are hard to budge down market.
But in latest years, automakers catering to the road-going hoi polloi have found fresh ways to lower the volume, particularly for hybrid and electrified vehicles that don’t have the benefit of an engine to mask other vehicle noises. The result: Economy cars now carry things like side mirrors that maneuver airflow away from your windows, suspensions that dial out road noise, expanding gauze that corks gaps, and frames to maneuver sound away from the car’s occupants–all developed with the help of mannequins with mics in their ears and giant spherical cameras that can “see” sound.
Turning Down the Volume
“[Noise, stimulation, and harshness] spectacle instantly and directly influences our customers’ perception of vehicle quality and value,” says Honda engineer Andrea Martin, who tackled the problem for the two thousand eighteen Odyssey minivan. “But it’s even more fundamental. Low and mid frequency noise levels can dramatically contribute to driver weariness, and higher frequency noise levels can also inhibit the capability to hear conversations in the vehicle.” You know what’s worse than a complaining kid? A kid shouting his complaints so he can be heard over that dang tire hum.
So Honda’s engineers embarked by adapting the platform from the Ridgeline pickup, with its improved rear suspension design that mitigates sound and stimulation at the source. They launched what Martin calls a “comprehensive sealing strategy,” deploying paint sealers, insulating dump foam, and gauze that expands when heated, so it fills gaps inbetween the welded bits.
Engineering Wonders
How a 70-Year-Old Idea Could Make Engines Way More Efficient
Inwards the Pristine Factory Where Bugatti Crafts the $Two.6M Chiron
Thank These Riveting Robots for Planes That Don’t Fall Apart
The team used acoustic glass and insulation, as well–two familiar tactics for premium cars that are now affordable enough for higher-volume products. Also trickling down: advanced engineering simulation technologies to design assets structures where sound and stimulation paths are diminished or eliminated. “These are all low-cost or cost-neutral opportunities that can be applied across an entire lineup,” Martin says.
In its battle against noise, Volkswagen relies on prevention. “The general treatment is not to reduce noise by extra insulation, but rather avoid the creation of any disturbing noise in the very first place through wise engineering,” says engineering rep Christian Buhlmann. For example, the automaker substituted the vapid firewall separating the engine compartment from the cabin in the fresh Golf Mk seven with a waffle-shaped one that absorbs stimulations.
The Germans designed the sideview mirrors to channel wind away from the windows. The underfloor panels direct airflow underneath the car straight from front to rear, eliminating the noisy turbulence that free-flowing air generates. This sort of panel, usually reserved for high-end sports cars, also reduces vehicle haul, a boon for efficiency.
Pinpointing the Squawk
Before they can get to the shushing, of course, engineers must sort out what’s squawking. Nissan deployed a multitude of laboratory and test-track strategies to pinpoint and measure sound coming from its fresh Titan pickup truck. They relied on “acoustic cameras” that create color-coded pics highlighting the noisiest areas of a cabin, dozens of microphones surrounding vehicle exteriors to assess framework and powertrain noise, and real-world testing across a multiplicity of road surfaces. (Tire design also contributes mightily to cabin acoustics, so the manufacturers work closely with tire makers to ideal the rubber compounds and tread design for each car.)
Nissan, which also folded in Bose acoustic noise canceling technology to the cabins of its Maxima, Murano, 370Z models, used that data to determine where to add insulation and body-sealing, as well as to design fresh hydraulic assets mounts. That alone dropped low-frequency stimulation by a utter ten decibels.
Inwards the World’s Largest Wind Tunnel
For its bid to quash noise in its fresh CX-5 crossover, Mazda deployed dozens of sensors–even sticking some in the in the “ears” of mannequins sitting in the vehicle. They did real world testing, too, with regular humans. “We found, for example, that at highway speeds the aerodynamic compels actually pulled the doors away from the car, letting in wind noise,” said Dave Coleman, Mazda’s chief of vehicle dynamics engineering. “So we created a deeper door seal to prevent that.”
Coleman’s team next added dampers on each strut to cancel out their acoustical footprint, inserted a sound blocker inbetween the back seat and the cargo cover, tucked the windshield wipers underneath the spandex hood to take them out of the slipstream, and added fabric to the naked metal surfaces inwards the car, so they don’t reflect noise up from the below. “Those metal surfaces essentially turn into loudspeakers,” Coleman says.
Even the sound that does make it through is now routed rearward instead of toward the front of the car, thanks to tweaks in the metal framework specifically for this purpose. All of this comes in addition to the effortless stuff–acoustic glass, tighter window channels, and more insulation behind door panels and in the piles.
The effort pays off: The CX-5 isn’t just quieter than its competitors, it feels a hair above its class. Tho’ things like the doors and seats don’t have the heft of those in fancier cars, the interior produces the same blissful quietude you get in, say, an Audi Q7 or a Mercedes S-Class. Conversation is effortless, music is no longer a battle tactic. It’s a perk you can neither see nor hear, but one you’ll appreciate, no matter how much you paid for your car.
