One of the best things about owning a car with a big V8 stuffed under the hood is the sound. Stomping on the go pedal and listening to that glorious roar makes the price you paid worth it. However, while you may absolutely love it chances are your neighbors hate you for it. Ford understands buyer’s plight and aims to fix that with the 2018 Mustang GT.
No, the Mustang isn’t getting its signature sound nerfed. Instead, Ford fitted the Mustang with a rather trick system that allows owners to set their car to “Quiet Mode”. This mode can even automatically activate during certain times. So if you’re like many Mustang enthusiasts and head to Cars & Coffee early Saturday morning, you won’t disturb Mrs. Jones who’s trying to read the paper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1MehhS4GIw
Unfortunately, at the dismay of teenagers, this feature can’t be overridden if the car uses the MyKey functionality. MyKey allows for parents to lock in settings as a digital nanny for their rowdy kids. That means there’s no impressing your buddies if your dad set the exhaust to “Quiet Mode”.
The idea for the system came from Steve von Foerster, who leads the user experience team at Ford. Early one Saturday morning in a peaceful Detroit suburb, he backed his Mustang GT350 out of the garage. This was to the annoyance of his neighbors who called the police on him. Luckily for him, he booked it before the police showed up. This gave him the idea to develop a better way not to irk those around him.
With the system in “Quiet Mode” the Mustang now starts at a reasonable 72 decibels. This is about 10 decibels lower than the stock exhaust. It achieves this through adjusting the active exhaust, which is new for the car.
If you want to truly annoy your neighbors though, you can also set the Mustang to “Track Mode”. This turns the exhaust note up to 11.
The new feature does leave us a little concerned, however. Now, crowds everywhere will never hear the Mustang coming as it plows into them leaving a car show. At least the carnage will be more peaceful.
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