A lot of extra thought that goes into high-end cars. I remember reading an article about how the sound of the door shutting is carefully tweaked to make it feel substantial and expensive.
Few things sound like they actually do. The sounds made by technology are more a story about what it should sound like than what it actually does.
Because drivers don’t get the sensation of a “real” car in a hybrid electric car, speakers are now being placed in the cab to play synthetic engine noise for the driver. And, because it’s synthetic, the noise piped into a Prius can be made to sound like a Lamborghini.
Yesterday's BMW article had in interesting section on how they made a special dual mass flywheel to dampen vibration at lower RPMs so the sound would be more agreeable and people would not downshift as early.
A lot of effort and expense to work around a misprogrammed driver.
Edit: Found this: http://soundinthemachine.org/2009/01/21/the-swaying-car-door...
Few things sound like they actually do. The sounds made by technology are more a story about what it should sound like than what it actually does.
Because drivers don’t get the sensation of a “real” car in a hybrid electric car, speakers are now being placed in the cab to play synthetic engine noise for the driver. And, because it’s synthetic, the noise piped into a Prius can be made to sound like a Lamborghini.