March 12, 2020 • 22 mins
When Akio Toyoda hears from a journalist that the Lexus brand is “boring,” he challenges the team to create a sports coupe to defy expectations, all the way down to the sound of the engine. Join Malcolm as he dives in to the creation of the perfect engine note.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. In August of twenty eleven, Lexus held a special
event at the Concours de Elegance in Pebble Beach, California.
The Concours de Elegance is maybe the most important vintage
car show in the world, ground zero for the most
(00:37):
serious car enthusiasts. To give you a sense, here are
the most recent Best in Show nominees. A nineteen thirty
eight Talbot Logo, Teardrop cabriolet, a nineteen thirty six Mercedes
five forty K and in nineteen sixty two Aston Martin
dbfore GT Zagatto coupe in English Racing Green. I would
(00:58):
seriously trade all of my earthly possessions for nineteen sixty
two Aston Martin dbfour GT Zagato coupe in English Racing
Green anyway, and the winner is the nineteen thirty four
wasn't owned by Peter Maland it's the concourse the Elegance
(01:19):
of twenty eleven, and Lexus wants to give the gearheads
a sneak peek at their twenty thirteen Lexus GS three fifty.
They're all new sports Sedan. The CEO of Toyota, Akio Toyota,
is on hand Akiosan, by the way, is a serious
race car driver competes all the time. Just last year,
(01:39):
he snuck into the twenty four hour Induro at the
famed German Nurburgring as part of the Toyota team under
an assumed name mister Marizo. I mean, how great is that?
It's kind of like if the CEO of Nike had
a side gig as an Olympic marathoner. The GS is
as the symbol of the new generation of the Lexus.
(02:03):
This vehicle has the spindle, unique grill and that we
all pay much attention for elevating the big pahomas that
driving signature. That's Koji Sato, who everyone calls Satosan, president
of Lexus International. So we all the team member is
so proud that because we could create a new generation
(02:26):
Lexus appealing to the market. So the announcement on the
introduction is success rita well received. We could we could
get a big up rose. Oh it's beautiful, it's a
nice car. Then Akio Toyota meets with the trade journalists
(02:46):
and what he's expecting is a coronation. The GS is
a hit. Lexus is remaking its image. They've just had
a wave of applause. So akia Son asks the gathered
auto writers the Carnets, for their impressions of Lexus. Please
feel free to say to me so he said. The
one of the generalists told to Akio, oh, thank you,
(03:10):
so that I know the Lexus a long time. So
Lexus is a nice car, but I'm sorry it's boring,
he said, boring. A journalist tells the CEO of Toyota
on the sacred ground of Pebble Beach that the Lexus
brand is boring. It's a really shocked for us. So
(03:34):
we believe that we could create a bit of nice
car in a luxurical segment. So our business landing was
landing so good at that moment. So but one of
the generalists still us, it's boring. It's really shocked to
us why they think the Lexus is as boring From
(04:02):
Pushkin Industries and Lexus. This is go and see our
podcast about the many obsessions of Lexus. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
This episode, in fact, the next three episodes are about
(04:22):
what you do if you are Akio Toyota and someone
calls your car is boring. Now, in defense of that
unnamed journalist, he wasn't being snarky. He was just stating
a fact in the public mind. The signature Lexus will
always be the first one that came to America in
nineteen eighty nine, the LS four hundred, which was a simple, unadorned,
(04:46):
elegant sedan a jewel box last forever. One of my
neighbors has an original LS four hundred. He's been parking
it on the streets of Manhattan for god knows how
many years. The thing looks like it just rolled off
the lot. It's an incredible car, but it is not exciting.
It was not supposed to be exciting. It was supposed
(05:07):
to be an object lesson in understated hardcore engineering brilliance.
The phrase Sutosan used was left brain. Lexus was all
left brain. And after the journalists rebuke, Satosan comes back
and says, we need to be a little more right brain.
And so when he came back, he said to all
(05:30):
of these guys here, I don't ever want to hear
that again. That's Paul Williamson, who was our guide when
we were in Japan. Everyone at Lexus knows the Pebble
Beach story. Kill Taylors, never boring, never boring. Okay, so
imagine that you're Lexis. You don't want to be boring anymore.
Where do you start? The obvious answer is that you
(05:52):
make a sports car. All of Lexus's competitors have a
serious sports car in their lineup, because sports cars are
where you struct your stuff. Calvin Klein has an underwear line,
and he has a tour line. In the car world,
boxy four cylinder economy Sadan are underwear. Insanely fast sports
cars are coutur. All the Germans have a coatur line.
(06:16):
How he has the A eight, BMW has the I eight.
Mercedes has esl ladies and gentlemen interducing the all new
Lexus Elsie five. The LC five hundred is more than
a new luxury bottel. It's a new flagship sports coupe
for a new Lexus. So, just over four years after
(06:40):
Pebble Beach at the Detroit Auto Show, Lexus introduces the LC.
If you don't know what an ELC looks like, stop everything.
Google it now if you don't want to, I'm just
going to read to you what my friend Dan wrote
me after I asked him about the LC. Understand that
Dan is the most serious car guy I have ever met.
(07:03):
He is a garage full of every single car you
would ever want. Nine to eleven's Clarence Ferrari's Chevy SS,
which is like the insider's inside a car and a
car that I want very badly. Anyway, Dan writes me,
I think the LC is the best Japanese design car
in decades. Stunning hate the sound system controls, but nearly perfect.
(07:28):
Otherwise Porsche would charge twenty five k more for that
level interior. The only thing that Dan Dan can find
wrong with the LC is the sound system controls. Now,
what do people like Dan like about the LC? It's
hard to pick one thing. The car is low slung,
(07:48):
has an impossibly long hood, accent notes behind the doors,
tear drop rear lights. Oh my, but a beautiful car
is only half the battle against the fatal accusation of boring.
For years, Lexus made a coup called the sc which
was on the Car and Driver ten Best Cars list
for a long stretch in the nineteen nine The sc
(08:11):
was beautiful, but no one ever took the sc Out
on winding, rolling back roads early on a Sunday morning
to test its limits. So what happens when Lexus intentionally
sets out to do exciting the Lexus way, which is
to say, with the same kind of obsessive dedication that
leads to car windows that close like Nigeri Gucci doors.
(08:33):
Over the next three episodes, I'm going to try and
answer that question, but it starts with this. When I
(09:05):
stought I was the chief engineer with the LC, so
when when I start development of LC, I'm going around
in the United States, the many praise Sato Son Again.
He's talking about a longstanding practice at Lexus. Lexus began
in the late nineteen eighties as a brand sold only
(09:26):
the North American market. Toyota conceived of it as a
Japanese luxury car for Americans. For years, Lexus would send
teams of people to the US, particularly southern California, to
immerse themselves in American car culture. We say, go and
see the genji game is a very important thing for us.
(09:46):
What the what's the word, what's the Japanese word? Gain
chi game? But gain chi means go you should go there. Yeah,
you should see something by yourself. This is a very
important thing for us to create something new. I met
(10:07):
many of the car guys in the United States sometimes
going to kas and the coffee. So the older praise
that people tell in tearing me, how they love to call,
how they feel I'm proud of their engine noise that
(10:30):
sometimes they appeal into me. Oh, hey you please hear
my engine sound? Wow? How you write it? Yeah, This
kind of emotional things as very mortumate me. Oh, this
is the culture. This is the car culture for the
(10:53):
car guys. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the
world of automobile obsessives, cars and coffee is an essential ritual.
We're on Sunday or Saturday morning all across the world,
all the Porsche nine eleven people, or the Corvette people
or the Mustang people gather in parking lots to talk
about their cars and obsess about their cars, and drive
(11:15):
their cars and drink coffee. I once spent a guy
on an airplane who met up with all of his
Ferrari friends every Sunday morning to roam the back roads
of rural New Jersey. He invited me to join them.
I lost his number. I will never live that down anyway. Satosan,
a senior guy one of the world's biggest car manufacturers,
(11:38):
starts showing up at random cars and coffee meetups, which
is like if you went to your local pickup game
and there was Lebron James crazy And what does Satosan
learn at Alexis he'd spent years obsessing over engine refinement
because we always think thet DNA is the kind of
(12:00):
the quietness is one of the strong points of the
Alexis broun because of that, all the chief engineer believes
quite the it's bitter who is but no one was
talking about quiet refined engines at cars and Coffee. But
I'm really surprised that many car guys love the noisy engines,
(12:25):
but they smile, make a peak smile. So his first
thought when he flew back to Japan to build a
more exciting Lexus was what should our beautiful sports car
sound like? Okay, let's go very deep into the world
(12:46):
of engines and sound, and trust me, it is a
world first question. If what you are thinking about is excitement,
do you or don't you turbo charge your engine? Turbo
Charging is a way of boosting the power of an engine.
It works by recirculating waste energy back into the combustion
process super efficient. But it means and forgive me, because
(13:11):
this is a gross simplification that you extracted energy from
the exhaust pipes. Imagine the biggest pipes of a pipe
organ they're played by the organist's feet to sustain the
low notes. If a child plays those keys with less force,
they're not going to sound the same. That's what happens
when you turbo charge. Just listen. Here's a portion of
(13:34):
nine eleven without a turbo, what's called naturally aspirated. Here's
a portion of nine eleven turbo. Here. The difference here
(14:03):
the wine or the turbo spooling up. Now, reasonable minds
may differ on this, and there are lots of people
who love that turbo sound, but purists not so much.
My other favorite car obsessive, my cousin Jeremy, equates a
turbocharger on an engine to eating sushi with a fork.
It works, but something's not right, So you want naturally aspirated,
(14:28):
not turbocharged. Next question, what sounds best a four cylinder engine,
six cylinder or eight cylinder. Now, this question, of course
is rhetorical because the answer has to be eight, because
nothing sounds like an eight cylinder. It's like Pavarotti for yours.
One of the world's greatest tenors. Pavarotti was not some
(14:51):
skinny dude like me. Short skinny dudes do not sing
with power and authority. Big guys do. This is what
four cylinders sounds like. This, on the other hand, is
(15:15):
what a naturally aspirated V eight sounds like. No contest,
so you want a naturally aspirated V eight, But we're
not done. A V eight is two sets of four
(15:36):
cylinders arrayed in a V shape, firing up and down
one at a time in order to spin around a
long shaft sitting at the base of the engine. That
shaft is the crankshaft, and it's the spinning of the
crankshaft that makes the wheels go round. V eights, though,
can have very different kinds of crank chafts. One is
(15:57):
called a flat plane. Flat plane crank chafts are light,
They spin incredibly fast. The pistons fire evenly left, right, left, right.
What you get is a higher, seamless silk wine, almost
like a turbine. The V eights in Italian supercars are
often flat planes. Race cars have flat planes. The new
(16:18):
Ford Mustang GT. Three fifty has a flat plane. Just listen.
The ever kind is cross plane it's much heavier, spins
more slowly. The pistons that drive it are far enough
apart that all the noise of all those little explosions
(16:40):
inside the engine are distinct. You can hear one, then another, boom, boom, boom.
The pistons fire unevenly one, eight, four, three, six, five, seven, two, left, right, right, left, right, left,
left right, burbling, bubbling, like a pot beginning to boil. Listen,
this is a Ford Mustang g T five hundred, the
(17:02):
cross plane sibling to the GT three fifty. That rumble,
there's no mistaking it. That's a cross plane. V ad
Now what's better. It's a matter of taste, of course,
(17:22):
But serious car guys, serious ones go for the burble
and the bubble of the cross plane. It's not some perfect,
seamless jet engine. It's a human engine, complex, unpredictable, emotional.
So where does Lexus start with its LCI engine naturally
aspirated cross plane va Okay, next step. The sound coming
(17:50):
out of an engine is a function of a lot
more than the number of cylinders and the type of crankshaft.
That sound is buffeted and altered and distorted by a
thousand other factors as the sound ways twist their way
to the pipes and tubes of the engine. If you
look at the acoustic signature of an engine in its
natural state, it would be jagged, lots of discordant notes
(18:13):
mixed in with that marvelous undertone of rumble. So the
job of the carmaker is then to tune that sound
like a conductor brings together all the very different sounds
of an orchestra. Now there's an easy way to do this.
You could simply create an engine note with a synthesizer
and pump it into the cabin through a speaker. Lots
(18:35):
of carmakers do this. My daily driver, which I love,
by the way, except for the thing I'm about to
tell you, has a turbo four cylinder engine that tries
to make up for its acoustic shortcomings by piping fake
engine noise into the cabin through a little German gizmo
called a sound ductor. Sound ductor sounds like sound dictator,
(19:04):
drives me crazy. That's totally cheating. Who wants to spend
thousands and thousands on a car only to have it
lip sync its way from zero to sixty? You have
to keep it real noise shot. Yeah, there's basically a
lot of variance and frequencies, so there's a lot of
noise in between those frequencies. Yea, And you do you
(19:26):
want us you want to smooth that out? Is that it?
That's subtleus on again the head of lexus. Yeah, basically,
but too much sumooz is not hits your heart. Yeah.
You need some noise, Yeah, some sudden point. That's the point.
So if it's too smooth, no exciting, you start with
(19:49):
the underlying engine note, then we tune a little bit
so and then create some harmony. It's like a piano
or trumpet or something like. If you ride in an
LC at high speeds and trust me, we'll get to that,
you feel like you're in a concert hall. The sound
starts at the front as the car first gets underway.
(20:12):
Then that you push the slow through. Then you get
the g force. Then gradually the engine sound of the
intake and the exhaust is switched. It's kind of a
move moves from the front to front and back. And
how do you get this instrument to sound just right?
(20:35):
There's no formula. You just do endless trial and error.
You make the intake hose a little longer or a
little shorter. You vary the angle of the valves and
the exhaust pipes and repeat. I forgot how many times
we tried? Many times, Many times we create a pro
type parts and the hearing, hear the engine sound, and
(20:59):
then check and then on a rise and the tune again.
Many times we do. But how many can you m
not the hundred more, two hundred, three hundred more over
(21:19):
what period of time whole the totally that we spend
a five years, five years, five years to create one car? Yeah,
five years on the engine sound. That's a lot, but
it's not all. On the next episode, I'll Go and
(21:42):
See a little dive into music theory and why we
respond to sounds, even mechanical sounds, the way we do.
Go and See is produced by Jacob Smith with Emily
Rostek and Carl Migliari, edited by Julia Barton. Evan Viola
(22:04):
composed our theme music and mixed and mastered our episodes
special thanks to Jacob Weisberg had a fame, Paul Williamson,
the Mark Levinson engineers, and all the Lexus executives, engineers
and designers who participated in our recordings. Go and See
is a production of Lexus and Pushkin industries. I'm Mountain Rappo.
Pushkin. In August of twenty eleven, Lexus held a special
event at the Concours de Elegance in Pebble Beach, California.
The Concours de Elegance is maybe the most important vintage
car show in the world, ground zero for the most
(00:37):
serious car enthusiasts. To give you a sense, here are
the most recent Best in Show nominees. A nineteen thirty
eight Talbot Logo, Teardrop cabriolet, a nineteen thirty six Mercedes
five forty K and in nineteen sixty two Aston Martin
dbfore GT Zagatto coupe in English Racing Green. I would
(00:58):
seriously trade all of my earthly possessions for nineteen sixty
two Aston Martin dbfour GT Zagato coupe in English Racing
Green anyway, and the winner is the nineteen thirty four
wasn't owned by Peter Maland it's the concourse the Elegance
(01:19):
of twenty eleven, and Lexus wants to give the gearheads
a sneak peek at their twenty thirteen Lexus GS three fifty.
They're all new sports Sedan. The CEO of Toyota, Akio Toyota,
is on hand Akiosan, by the way, is a serious
race car driver competes all the time. Just last year,
(01:39):
he snuck into the twenty four hour Induro at the
famed German Nurburgring as part of the Toyota team under
an assumed name mister Marizo. I mean, how great is that?
It's kind of like if the CEO of Nike had
a side gig as an Olympic marathoner. The GS is
as the symbol of the new generation of the Lexus.
(02:03):
This vehicle has the spindle, unique grill and that we
all pay much attention for elevating the big pahomas that
driving signature. That's Koji Sato, who everyone calls Satosan, president
of Lexus International. So we all the team member is
so proud that because we could create a new generation
(02:26):
Lexus appealing to the market. So the announcement on the
introduction is success rita well received. We could we could
get a big up rose. Oh it's beautiful, it's a
nice car. Then Akio Toyota meets with the trade journalists
(02:46):
and what he's expecting is a coronation. The GS is
a hit. Lexus is remaking its image. They've just had
a wave of applause. So akia Son asks the gathered
auto writers the Carnets, for their impressions of Lexus. Please
feel free to say to me so he said. The
one of the generalists told to Akio, oh, thank you,
(03:10):
so that I know the Lexus a long time. So
Lexus is a nice car, but I'm sorry it's boring,
he said, boring. A journalist tells the CEO of Toyota
on the sacred ground of Pebble Beach that the Lexus
brand is boring. It's a really shocked for us. So
(03:34):
we believe that we could create a bit of nice
car in a luxurical segment. So our business landing was
landing so good at that moment. So but one of
the generalists still us, it's boring. It's really shocked to
us why they think the Lexus is as boring From
(04:02):
Pushkin Industries and Lexus. This is go and see our
podcast about the many obsessions of Lexus. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
This episode, in fact, the next three episodes are about
(04:22):
what you do if you are Akio Toyota and someone
calls your car is boring. Now, in defense of that
unnamed journalist, he wasn't being snarky. He was just stating
a fact in the public mind. The signature Lexus will
always be the first one that came to America in
nineteen eighty nine, the LS four hundred, which was a simple, unadorned,
(04:46):
elegant sedan a jewel box last forever. One of my
neighbors has an original LS four hundred. He's been parking
it on the streets of Manhattan for god knows how
many years. The thing looks like it just rolled off
the lot. It's an incredible car, but it is not exciting.
It was not supposed to be exciting. It was supposed
(05:07):
to be an object lesson in understated hardcore engineering brilliance.
The phrase Sutosan used was left brain. Lexus was all
left brain. And after the journalists rebuke, Satosan comes back
and says, we need to be a little more right brain.
And so when he came back, he said to all
(05:30):
of these guys here, I don't ever want to hear
that again. That's Paul Williamson, who was our guide when
we were in Japan. Everyone at Lexus knows the Pebble
Beach story. Kill Taylors, never boring, never boring. Okay, so
imagine that you're Lexis. You don't want to be boring anymore.
Where do you start? The obvious answer is that you
(05:52):
make a sports car. All of Lexus's competitors have a
serious sports car in their lineup, because sports cars are
where you struct your stuff. Calvin Klein has an underwear line,
and he has a tour line. In the car world,
boxy four cylinder economy Sadan are underwear. Insanely fast sports
cars are coutur. All the Germans have a coatur line.
(06:16):
How he has the A eight, BMW has the I eight.
Mercedes has esl ladies and gentlemen interducing the all new
Lexus Elsie five. The LC five hundred is more than
a new luxury bottel. It's a new flagship sports coupe
for a new Lexus. So, just over four years after
(06:40):
Pebble Beach at the Detroit Auto Show, Lexus introduces the LC.
If you don't know what an ELC looks like, stop everything.
Google it now if you don't want to, I'm just
going to read to you what my friend Dan wrote
me after I asked him about the LC. Understand that
Dan is the most serious car guy I have ever met.
(07:03):
He is a garage full of every single car you
would ever want. Nine to eleven's Clarence Ferrari's Chevy SS,
which is like the insider's inside a car and a
car that I want very badly. Anyway, Dan writes me,
I think the LC is the best Japanese design car
in decades. Stunning hate the sound system controls, but nearly perfect.
(07:28):
Otherwise Porsche would charge twenty five k more for that
level interior. The only thing that Dan Dan can find
wrong with the LC is the sound system controls. Now,
what do people like Dan like about the LC? It's
hard to pick one thing. The car is low slung,
(07:48):
has an impossibly long hood, accent notes behind the doors,
tear drop rear lights. Oh my, but a beautiful car
is only half the battle against the fatal accusation of boring.
For years, Lexus made a coup called the sc which
was on the Car and Driver ten Best Cars list
for a long stretch in the nineteen nine The sc
(08:11):
was beautiful, but no one ever took the sc Out
on winding, rolling back roads early on a Sunday morning
to test its limits. So what happens when Lexus intentionally
sets out to do exciting the Lexus way, which is
to say, with the same kind of obsessive dedication that
leads to car windows that close like Nigeri Gucci doors.
(08:33):
Over the next three episodes, I'm going to try and
answer that question, but it starts with this. When I
(09:05):
stought I was the chief engineer with the LC, so
when when I start development of LC, I'm going around
in the United States, the many praise Sato Son Again.
He's talking about a longstanding practice at Lexus. Lexus began
in the late nineteen eighties as a brand sold only
(09:26):
the North American market. Toyota conceived of it as a
Japanese luxury car for Americans. For years, Lexus would send
teams of people to the US, particularly southern California, to
immerse themselves in American car culture. We say, go and
see the genji game is a very important thing for us.
(09:46):
What the what's the word, what's the Japanese word? Gain
chi game? But gain chi means go you should go there. Yeah,
you should see something by yourself. This is a very
important thing for us to create something new. I met
(10:07):
many of the car guys in the United States sometimes
going to kas and the coffee. So the older praise
that people tell in tearing me, how they love to call,
how they feel I'm proud of their engine noise that
(10:30):
sometimes they appeal into me. Oh, hey you please hear
my engine sound? Wow? How you write it? Yeah, This
kind of emotional things as very mortumate me. Oh, this
is the culture. This is the car culture for the
(10:53):
car guys. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the
world of automobile obsessives, cars and coffee is an essential ritual.
We're on Sunday or Saturday morning all across the world,
all the Porsche nine eleven people, or the Corvette people
or the Mustang people gather in parking lots to talk
about their cars and obsess about their cars, and drive
(11:15):
their cars and drink coffee. I once spent a guy
on an airplane who met up with all of his
Ferrari friends every Sunday morning to roam the back roads
of rural New Jersey. He invited me to join them.
I lost his number. I will never live that down anyway. Satosan,
a senior guy one of the world's biggest car manufacturers,
(11:38):
starts showing up at random cars and coffee meetups, which
is like if you went to your local pickup game
and there was Lebron James crazy And what does Satosan
learn at Alexis he'd spent years obsessing over engine refinement
because we always think thet DNA is the kind of
(12:00):
the quietness is one of the strong points of the
Alexis broun because of that, all the chief engineer believes
quite the it's bitter who is but no one was
talking about quiet refined engines at cars and Coffee. But
I'm really surprised that many car guys love the noisy engines,
(12:25):
but they smile, make a peak smile. So his first
thought when he flew back to Japan to build a
more exciting Lexus was what should our beautiful sports car
sound like? Okay, let's go very deep into the world
(12:46):
of engines and sound, and trust me, it is a
world first question. If what you are thinking about is excitement,
do you or don't you turbo charge your engine? Turbo
Charging is a way of boosting the power of an engine.
It works by recirculating waste energy back into the combustion
process super efficient. But it means and forgive me, because
(13:11):
this is a gross simplification that you extracted energy from
the exhaust pipes. Imagine the biggest pipes of a pipe
organ they're played by the organist's feet to sustain the
low notes. If a child plays those keys with less force,
they're not going to sound the same. That's what happens
when you turbo charge. Just listen. Here's a portion of
(13:34):
nine eleven without a turbo, what's called naturally aspirated. Here's
a portion of nine eleven turbo. Here. The difference here
(14:03):
the wine or the turbo spooling up. Now, reasonable minds
may differ on this, and there are lots of people
who love that turbo sound, but purists not so much.
My other favorite car obsessive, my cousin Jeremy, equates a
turbocharger on an engine to eating sushi with a fork.
It works, but something's not right, So you want naturally aspirated,
(14:28):
not turbocharged. Next question, what sounds best a four cylinder engine,
six cylinder or eight cylinder. Now, this question, of course
is rhetorical because the answer has to be eight, because
nothing sounds like an eight cylinder. It's like Pavarotti for yours.
One of the world's greatest tenors. Pavarotti was not some
(14:51):
skinny dude like me. Short skinny dudes do not sing
with power and authority. Big guys do. This is what
four cylinders sounds like. This, on the other hand, is
(15:15):
what a naturally aspirated V eight sounds like. No contest,
so you want a naturally aspirated V eight, But we're
not done. A V eight is two sets of four
(15:36):
cylinders arrayed in a V shape, firing up and down
one at a time in order to spin around a
long shaft sitting at the base of the engine. That
shaft is the crankshaft, and it's the spinning of the
crankshaft that makes the wheels go round. V eights, though,
can have very different kinds of crank chafts. One is
(15:57):
called a flat plane. Flat plane crank chafts are light,
They spin incredibly fast. The pistons fire evenly left, right, left, right.
What you get is a higher, seamless silk wine, almost
like a turbine. The V eights in Italian supercars are
often flat planes. Race cars have flat planes. The new
(16:18):
Ford Mustang GT. Three fifty has a flat plane. Just listen.
The ever kind is cross plane it's much heavier, spins
more slowly. The pistons that drive it are far enough
apart that all the noise of all those little explosions
(16:40):
inside the engine are distinct. You can hear one, then another, boom, boom, boom.
The pistons fire unevenly one, eight, four, three, six, five, seven, two, left, right, right, left, right, left,
left right, burbling, bubbling, like a pot beginning to boil. Listen,
this is a Ford Mustang g T five hundred, the
(17:02):
cross plane sibling to the GT three fifty. That rumble,
there's no mistaking it. That's a cross plane. V ad
Now what's better. It's a matter of taste, of course,
(17:22):
But serious car guys, serious ones go for the burble
and the bubble of the cross plane. It's not some perfect,
seamless jet engine. It's a human engine, complex, unpredictable, emotional.
So where does Lexus start with its LCI engine naturally
aspirated cross plane va Okay, next step. The sound coming
(17:50):
out of an engine is a function of a lot
more than the number of cylinders and the type of crankshaft.
That sound is buffeted and altered and distorted by a
thousand other factors as the sound ways twist their way
to the pipes and tubes of the engine. If you
look at the acoustic signature of an engine in its
natural state, it would be jagged, lots of discordant notes
(18:13):
mixed in with that marvelous undertone of rumble. So the
job of the carmaker is then to tune that sound
like a conductor brings together all the very different sounds
of an orchestra. Now there's an easy way to do this.
You could simply create an engine note with a synthesizer
and pump it into the cabin through a speaker. Lots
(18:35):
of carmakers do this. My daily driver, which I love,
by the way, except for the thing I'm about to
tell you, has a turbo four cylinder engine that tries
to make up for its acoustic shortcomings by piping fake
engine noise into the cabin through a little German gizmo
called a sound ductor. Sound ductor sounds like sound dictator,
(19:04):
drives me crazy. That's totally cheating. Who wants to spend
thousands and thousands on a car only to have it
lip sync its way from zero to sixty? You have
to keep it real noise shot. Yeah, there's basically a
lot of variance and frequencies, so there's a lot of
noise in between those frequencies. Yea, And you do you
(19:26):
want us you want to smooth that out? Is that it?
That's subtleus on again the head of lexus. Yeah, basically,
but too much sumooz is not hits your heart. Yeah.
You need some noise, Yeah, some sudden point. That's the point.
So if it's too smooth, no exciting, you start with
(19:49):
the underlying engine note, then we tune a little bit
so and then create some harmony. It's like a piano
or trumpet or something like. If you ride in an
LC at high speeds and trust me, we'll get to that,
you feel like you're in a concert hall. The sound
starts at the front as the car first gets underway.
(20:12):
Then that you push the slow through. Then you get
the g force. Then gradually the engine sound of the
intake and the exhaust is switched. It's kind of a
move moves from the front to front and back. And
how do you get this instrument to sound just right?
(20:35):
There's no formula. You just do endless trial and error.
You make the intake hose a little longer or a
little shorter. You vary the angle of the valves and
the exhaust pipes and repeat. I forgot how many times
we tried? Many times, Many times we create a pro
type parts and the hearing, hear the engine sound, and
(20:59):
then check and then on a rise and the tune again.
Many times we do. But how many can you m
not the hundred more, two hundred, three hundred more over
(21:19):
what period of time whole the totally that we spend
a five years, five years, five years to create one car? Yeah,
five years on the engine sound. That's a lot, but
it's not all. On the next episode, I'll Go and
(21:42):
See a little dive into music theory and why we
respond to sounds, even mechanical sounds, the way we do.
Go and See is produced by Jacob Smith with Emily
Rostek and Carl Migliari, edited by Julia Barton. Evan Viola
(22:04):
composed our theme music and mixed and mastered our episodes
special thanks to Jacob Weisberg had a fame, Paul Williamson,
the Mark Levinson engineers, and all the Lexus executives, engineers
and designers who participated in our recordings. Go and See
is a production of Lexus and Pushkin industries. I'm Mountain Rappo.
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