Quote:
Originally Posted by rconti
But for a street car, what's the point? Simply put, a 335 is damn near silent with stock exhaust, so it's silly to say it sounds better than a 328. If you want to mod the exhaust, you probably bought the wrong car -- for one, the turbo dampens the sound right off the bat, so you're not gonna hear that much anyway.
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For me it's not about how loud it is, it's about what I hear. My favorite sounding car was my 2008 300C AWD with the 5.7L Hemi. The exhaust was tuned for luxury refinement, so it's really quiet, but you can hear the faint throaty V8 rumble during moderate acceleration that reminds you that you're driving a big ass American V8. (That and getting 18mpg at the pump)
My last car was a 2011 A4 2.0T, and my initial worry was that I'd find going from 340HP/400lb-ft to a 2.0T would leave me craving more power. That didn't turn out to be the case. Most of the time, I was annoyed with the engine note. The turbo-4 was always some mix of buzzing, vibrating, or turbo hissing. None of which were sounds I liked to hear. Between that and the ~2s of turbo lag when coasting or at standstill, I got tired of that car after less than 2 years of ownership.
The AH3's exhaust note is decent, presumably the same as the 335i. When you floor it, the engine delivers refined power and sounds like it's having a good time doing it. The few rare times the car idles with the engine on, it's smooth and doesn't cause the steering column to shake (which my A4 did during cold starts). The power admittedly is overkill (no day to day driving requires the kind of power this car can deliver), and I'd be fine with a 328i from that standpoint, it's just the overall feeling of refinement is not quite there.