Best Four-Stroke Engine Sound Ever?

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Jul 17, 2015
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I absolutely love this video and play it at times to just plain feel good about things in general, but always with the sound cranked up to full eleven. One reason is because I think the F7F is the coolest and most beautiful aircraft ever made - period, but second and not least, is the incredible sound those Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp radial engines are booming out while being enhanced by that magical Doppler shift. Another fave and very close second is with a certain V-12 British Merlin, with the Doppler shift happening just about as close as you'd want to get.

I know we all love the sounds of our well tuned four-strokes at full song, so my challenge is to throw up your best shot at a video or sound track with any four-stroke engine really singing its heart out.



 
How would you like to be sitting in down-town Berlin in 1945 and hear this ?

 
My friend was in Frankfurt in the 1950s and one flew in, on it's way back to the UK from the middle east. At the airport the RAF servicemen were sitting all over it. When it took off my friend was in the town. The Germans in the street seemed a bit apprehensive as it flew over.
 
These don't sound half as good, but they used to scare the shit out of me when I was a baby. I grew up to love them. My father used to go AWOL during WW2 and hitch a ride in a B24 with the Yanks to get home to my mother. The Yanks usually got lost on the way.

If you start this clip and the following one together, they sound really good.
 
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Prolly' like 40 years ago and living near Hanscom Field in Mass.
They used to do an air show. One time I heard a hellacious roar headed our way, ran outside and watched four P-51's with about 50' between wingtips, rip by.
The Doppler shift of the engine noise literally put the hair on my neck straight up with chills!
I will never forget it.

2nd Best- As a young 'un they would allow you to stand pretty close to the starting line at Epping Dragway N.H.
Standing there with our hands pushed hard against our ears watching the old style rails take off (engine in front of driver) and feeling like someone was drumming on your chest. When they took off it was like a TNT chain explosion!
 
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The best 4 stroke sound ever, ever, ever has to be the BRM V16 from 1953. It makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck every time it comes past the pits and to hear the slight misfires at high revs and the crackles. Second half of the clip is onboard.

 
The best 4 stroke sound ever, ever, ever has to be the BRM V16 from 1953. It makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck every time it comes past the pits and to hear the slight misfires at high revs and the crackles. Second half of the clip is onboard.




In Australia we get a sound a bit like that from our V8 Supercars. But on every gear-change there is a backfire explosion out of their exhausts. It really irritates me when I have to work at car race--meetings at Winton. That explosion sound is the same noise which meant somebody had probably died, in the industry in which I used to work.
 
As partial as I am to the F7F and its radial engines, and as impressive as the BRM was, I've got to agree with Fast Eddie on the Merlin. Variations of that engine were in the P-51, but it clearly sounds best in a Spitfire.

 
Amazing. I've found a group of people who think like me. To watch, hear, smell, and feel an engine working well is a thrill. Check out the " Shell Ferrarri" TV commercial from about 10 years ago. It's on YouTube also. Turn up the volume and watch the reactions of people in the video. Love it.
Charlie
 
The best sounding race car I've heard was the Mercedes W196 that Fangio drove at Sandown, in Melbourne - in about 1980.

 
As partial as I am to the F7F and its radial engines, and as impressive as the BRM was, I've got to agree with Fast Eddie on the Merlin. Variations of that engine were in the P-51, but it clearly sounds best in a Spitfire.



Listening to and watching that, I get an adrenalin rush. It's no wonder spitfire pilots used to get diabetes.
 
I grew up in Seattle where hydroplane racing was king. Hundreds of thousands of fans watching it live and it was broadcast on our three major TV stations. A big deal in the 50s and 60s. I loved the old Packards and Merlins but I know that I soiled myself the first time that I heard the Rolls Griffon in the Budweiser boat. Chip Hanauer said in an interview that you could hear it coming on you from half a straightaway away even over the sound of your own machine. Standing on the banks of Lake Washington the hair would rise on the nape of my neck and I'd get all goose bumpy. Still do thinking about it. When the drivers would hit the nitrous it got even more intense.
 
One mag pundit called the RC 166 an "angry antique"

 
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