Quote Of The Day: America, F*** Yeah

I say Rimsky-Korsakov or Prokofiev for the soundtrack.

@28-Cars-Later Prokofiev's 5th Symphony! F*** Yeah!

@petezeiss You can't debate the relative merits of Russian composers, then expect to bring a competitive game to the Dumb Truck League.

@Pch101 Which Russian composer is your favorite?

*claps* Brilliant post, pee-zee!

@Pch101 The Truth About Composers: Tchaikovsky is fave Russian overall but Prokofiev's 5th is fave single work. Tchaikovsky is one of innumerable examples that throughout history gays have been disproportionately towering genii. Don't persecute gays or you lose a ton of good stuff. Otherwise I'm all down with the Germermans, esp. Wagner, Beethoven, Schubert and Bach. BUT, Baroque Italians produced the most concentrated form of Music I Will Die To. Vivaldi & Locatelli top my list.

@Pch101 I'm strongly partial to Ravel and DeBussy myself. Don't know why, but their music just seems to tickle the right bones. My fave Russians would be Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. American, Aaron Copland by a landslide, then Gershwin. Copland, F*** yeah!

@Pch101 F*** Yeah! Let's spray some Lysol and take this thread over. I've always loved the French impressionist composers, especially the two you mention. Also English pastoral symphonists. Big, lavish, rolling orchestral works spin my beanie. But for absolute blood-pumping, spine-straightening, get-up-and-kick-ass MAGNIFICENCE, nothing holds a candle to Wagner's incidental music to his Ring cycle. That is cultural crack and I fall for it every time.

Try to read these posts while listening to Barber's "Adagio for Strings". Hey, he's American.

@Drzhivago138 Isn't that just one of the most evocative uses of people scraping tarred-up hairs across strings you've ever heard? Froze his career, how do you follow that?

@petezeiss Sadly, you don't in old Sammy's case.

@Drzhivago138 Says who? The Piano Concerto from the early 1960s is freakin' great. (Won the Pulitzer Prize too, but would be great in any case.)

@Drzhivago138 I'm thinking more Butterfield Blues Band. Now that's American music! It's hard to overestimate the influence of TPBBB. I could leave East/West on permanent rotation in my CD player. BTW, "Born In Chicago" was written by Nick Gravenites, not some grizzled old bluesman.

I'm sure it will have a balance shaft.

The vertical shaking forces of a 90 degree V8 flat plane engine are square root of 2, or 1.4 times that of a four cylinder with the same bore and stroke. Significant. So two balance shafts are required for smoothness. On the other hand, the only counterbalancing required on the crank is for piston plus conrod, instead of the massive counterweights on the usual crossplane V8. Exhausts are easier on the flat plane as well unless one thinks a log manifold is the height of technical advancement on a regular crossplane V8. Actual rotating inertia, including the balance shafts, can be far less for the flat plane, so it will blip like crazy. Looking forward to seeing the details on this new engine going forward.

@wmba Thanks for the informed discussion. We will find out soon, I hope.

@wmba I do find it odd that it took almost 110 comments before one mentioned the flat plane crank. Vibration may be an issue but the flat plane design will rev much faster and higher. I doubt this will rev like an LFA but it will pick up fast. It will also sound different, more like a sport bike. Yamaha went to a cross plane crank in the R1 to tone down the brutal power delivery and improve traction (attempt to mimic a V twin/V4 in power delivery). That will not be an issue in a heavy (relatively speaking) car will a contact patch that does not vary much with cornering. The engine and drivetrain specs will be interesting.

Are V8 powered Ferraris known to have NVH issues? As far as I know, Ferrari has never made a cross-plane V8 and I can't recall a review complaining that Ferrari V8s shake. If they can make big inline fours, inline fives, and 90 degree V6s spin and run smoothly, I'm pretty sure they can do it with a flat-plane V8.

@Ronnie Schreiber NVH "issues" are part of the charm of a Ferrari sports car, and the same should be true of a car like the GT350. Who would buy a car like this and want to be completely isolated from its mechanicals? I suspect this Mustang will have more sound-deadening, softer engine mounts, and a heavier flywheel than a Ferrari sports car anyway. It may even have balance shafts, which I don't believe the Ferraris use. I suspect that anyone wanting a 500 hp V8 sports car with a manual transmission and minimal tire s*dewalls will cons*der the engine's NVH to be a feature. There are plenty of softer Mustang options for those who don't. I recently read Jack's R&T PCOTY write-up, so this subject reminded me of his description of the 458's V8: "Every superlative you've ever read about a road-car engine is rendered trivial by this 597-hp tornado, the world-record holder for specific output in a naturally aspirated roadgoing vehicle, and approximately as subtle as a shotgun blast to the solar plexus. Not a fraction of potential power is wasted on things like flywheel weight or noise reduction. To sit in the Speciale is to be under the thrall of a roar that numbs your ears and vibrates every tendon in your body to a painful pitch." http://www.roadandtrack.com/features/magazine/2015-road-and-track-performance-car-of-the-year Sign me up. It's not like I'd be using such a thing as a regular commuter or for long highway trips; things that this Mustang will probably still work fine for.

@rpn453 "NVH “issues” are part of the charm of a Ferrari sports car" NVH Over $100K = "charming" NVH under $100K = "annoying"

@Lie2me True that! But it makes sense. It's much easier to love the side effects of a piece of mechanical beauty. We're at the point where even the Mustang V6 is somewhat of a mechanical beauty, though not everyone wants to be constantly reminded of that. I think the GT350 buyers will want those little reminders. It will be interesting to see how much of that will be allowed in this car.

@Lie2me True that! But it makes sense. It's much easier to love the s*de effects of a piece of mechanical beauty. We're at the point where even the Mustang V6 is somewhat of a mechanical beauty, though not everyone wants to be constantly reminded of that. I think the GT350 buyers will want those little reminders. It will be interesting to see how much of that will be allowed in this car.

@Lie2me "We’re at the point where even the Mustang V6 is somewhat of a mechanical beauty" Like a semi-beautiful woman

@Lie2me Progress on all fronts. One can spend an hour walking through a university campus on a warm spring day and see 100 women who look better than any movie star did for most of the 20th century. But I suppose they're only semi-beautiful because with terrible hair, clothes, make-up, grooming, and a poor physical fitness regimen they certainly wouldn't compare to the best of earlier times!

@Lie2me In other words semi-beautiful = obtainable

@Lie2me It would distract from the movie if an actress was too beautiful. Mustangs have always had subdued, hansom looks. By not trying to set the world on fire, in terms of looks, they appeal to a wider audience. To something 9 out of 10, of general population can live, if they were in the market for the sort of thing. Everything from school girls and librarians to rock stars and rappers?

@rpn453 NVH is absolutely part of the charm with Mustang/Challenger/Camaro. There's a lot of complaints that these cars aren't loud and rough enough amongst the owners on the boards.

@Ronnie Schreiber A Ferrari V8 idling can be felt in another car parked next to it. It buzzes rather than rumbles, sort of like two inline-4s with an attitude problem. This GT350, however, does not sound quite like a Ferrari V8. There must be something fundamentally different in the design, possibly not related to the crankshaft.

@MrIcky The first thing you do after buying a Mustang GT is throw on a Magnaflow or Borla.

@Lie2me Not really an issue of price, but an issue of application. Say you choose a Porsche over a BMW because you want, say, the unique raspy flat-6 noise. That's not necessarily >$100k, in fact very likely well under that price level.

An engine's exhaust note or 'sound' may be manipulated by spacing the exhaust pulsations within the exhaust system itself. Remember the '180 degree' header systems NASCAR was using? The cars sounded like they had inline 6s. Rednecks went home unhappy -->Kicked dog -->Beat wife. The flat crank arrangement has a more even exhaust pulse spacing and therefore a better scavenging (breathing) effect. Also, a crank with less inertia = more willingness to spin when given the juice.

It's Badass. There's your business case.

@DenverMike The Boss 302 is as you described, but it did not have or need a flat crank to be so.

@Numbers_Matching LOL at the stereotype. Perhaps I am hearing too much exhaust and not enough engine from the testing video. Looking forward to more details about the engine and exhaust.