For much of the day, the quiet Taunus mountains in Germany -- rolling green hills, prosperous farmland, dark Hansel and Gretel pine forests, Volkswagens driven slowly by well-groomed women on narrow smooth roads -- sound like Darlington raceway. From sleepy hollow to days of thunder.
You just don't hear sounds like this in Europe. Cars here have four-cylinder engines, coarsened by diesel rattle. Even performance cars, short of the big-ticket Ferraris, have turbocharged four- or six-cylinder motors. In this neck of the woods, V-8s-and only V-8s can make this kind of sound-are as rare as Ford pickups and Dunkin' Donuts.
But the brand-new Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG and the more mature Audi RS4, especially in thunderous sport-exhaust mode (yes, a switch dials up the Darlington on the Audi!), sound like Jeff Gordon's DuPont Chevy coming pedal-to-the-metal around turn four-big revs, big bellowing exhaust, big power, big American noise.
All three sedans have V-8 power. All three, then, are Yankee-inspired, for while America didn't invent the V-8, Detroit (and Henry Ford) certainly popularized it. They made it American shorthand for musclecar.
Originally BMW's M3 used a far more typical European formula for big speed-a high-revving silky sweet Formula 1-based four-cylinder engine. Since then, in the need for speed, four cylinders became six. Now, with the newest M3, six turns into eight.
Read Article