New Mustang Plays Fake Engine Noise

The purr of the engine in some 2015 Ford Mustangs may sound great, but it's not entirely real. The sound system on the four-cylinder Mustang EcoBoost "layer(s) in certain sound characteristics on top of what's already there," an engineer says, as Autoblog reports. The idea is to create a "natural experience": The car's engine processor adjusts the sound based on what the vehicle is doing.

Another engineer explained the situation to Britain's CAR Magazine last year, the Daily Digest reports via Jalopnik: "We don’t create an artificial sound; we don’t pluck one off the shelf—we bring in the real sound, process it, and play it through the car’s speakers." Last year's report didn't get much attention, but the issue resurfaced when a Road & Track editor pulled a fuse from the car, Autoblog reports. The result was that "both stereo & engine (went) quiet," the publication tweeted. (More Ford Mustang stories.)