AS a recent convert to motorcycling after almost 30 years of driving cars, vans and minibuses (the last two categories being the favoured means of transport for the hard-up musicians among whom I squandered my youth), none of which sported an exceptional exhaust note, I have become re-engaged with the sonic pleasures of the combustion engine.
My Suzuki SV650 might have only 74bhp but the V-twin engine that delivers this power to the rear wheel expels its unwanted gases via a Scorpion exhaust that to my ears issues a rorty snarl that sits, or perhaps loiters, on the right side of acceptable. My colleague Garry would beg to differ, but seeing as the exhaust on his last bike – a 1000cc Honda Firestorm – had all the subtlety of Donald Trump’s approach to international diplomacy I think we can agree his opinion is worth hee-haw.
If my bike were any louder I would indeed side with my Cumbria-dwelling sister, whose view of the rising number of bikers visiting the douce towns of Ambleside and Keswick is as dim as a zero-watt light bulb. The rumble of a squadron of Harley-Davidson Sportsters pootling through the dales on a Sunday morning is hardly in step with the world of Beatrix Potter, Wordsworth and Gore-Tex waterproofs.
There are few shades of grey when it comes to motorcycle exhausts – they’re either useless or, as in the case of Akrapovic cans, enlivening. With cars, though, you see – or rather hear – the gamut of sound. Between the frankly irrelevant breathlessness of my mother-in-law’s Kia Piccanto and the eardum-mangling howl of an AC Cobra lies a beguiling spectrum of sound.
But where the past is almost exclusively the domain of conventional cars, the future will be electric. And if the latest revelation from Nissan is to be believed, it will sound godawfully bad. Bowel-purgingly rotten. Sonically insulting.
Canto, Nissan’s Daniele Schillaci revealed recently at the Tokyo Motor Show, will be the sound of all the car maker’s electrified vehicles in future. As an educated reader you will be aware of the Latin meaning of the word, though any rogue cockneys casting their eyes over this might be led to believe it refers to the sort of person who dreams up names for engine noises that alert pedestrians to the presence of otherwise silent vehicles.
As you might expect, the pitch and tone of Canto change in line with the car’s acceleration and deceleration, though from what has been revealed by Nissan the chosen sound is like something out of a video game for pre-teens. Try to compare it with, say, the primal bark of the Mk5 Volkswagen Golf R32’s exhaust or the simmering ferocity of a Subaru Impreza WRX and you will founder. You would be better comparing a child’s pencil drawing with the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
The unveiling of Canto is another sign that motoring as you and I know it is on the brink of binary change. Those of us with an ear for a finely engineered exhaust note had better make hay now, because the future sounds almost as bad as it looks.
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