New road cars, even performance cars, don’t need to make these noises. They produce their power with relative efficiency and cleanliness, per the decree of legislation. They have trick injection systems, computer-controlled air/fuel ratios and enormous catalytic converters, particulate filters and clever software that stops too much more fuel than is strictly necessary and too many nasty emissions alike, from going in the engine or out the exhaust.
But like sticking the internals of the latest iPhone in a 1980s brick because the brick looked cool, cars like the first Jaguar F-Type joined a new generation of turbocharged BMW M cars and numerous other performance cars – even from Porsche, who are normally fairly averse to fakery and excess pageantry – in incorporating engineered-in fuel dumps for the sake of noise. Even Lamborghini soiled its V12 and V10 supercars with this nonsense.
These are noises you could turn on or off depending on your drive mode or even, if you don’t fancy a rock-hard ride, with a dedicated exhaust button. Now every warmed-over microwave meal performance model lets out a huff and a guff when you change gear and gets all post-vindaloo when you let off the throttle.
And everyone ate it up, even the ordinarily cynical motoring journalists of the world listened to the Jag, the Porsches, the hot hatch subset, and totally fell for it. They fell for the surface-level sonic charms of cars with glorified cherry bombs and flatulent flappy paddles.
And there I was, young and totally new to the industry, scratching my head wondering what an Earth the world was coming to. I know I wasn’t mad thinking that it was excessive too, because Jaguar actually wasted very little time in toning down the F-Type’s spluttery vocals in subsequent years.