Sights, Sounds, and Smells

We always hear about whether or not a car is visually appealing. Your eyes are one of the first senses you use to decide if you like a car or not. Without your eyes you wouldn’t know what specific body lines you like on a car. If you are from a car family you usually learn this very early when I was a child I loved the Super Stock Hemi Barracuda because of the hood scopes. As you grew up and your tastes matured you started moving to what colors you like, the amount of chrome you find to be in good taste, and specific styling you associate with fast cars.

 Once you progress beyond from “car enthusiast” to being a “car nut”, “gearhead”, “automotive fanatic”, “extreme tuner”, or whatever you prefer to be called, the senses you use to define cool change from just your eyes, to your nose and ears. I believe you can tell more from a vehicle by using your nose and ears than you could ever figure out with the eyes alone. Keeping with the theme of sights and sounds, I asked around the office to get their take on which smells and sounds are their favorites. While there were similarities in the answers, they were also as different as the personalities of the employees of DiabloSport.

The power adders ranked the highest: the whistle of the blow off valve on a turbo set up, the “PSSSSTTT” of a nitrous purge, and (my favorite) the whine of a supercharger. There were others who loved the loping sound of a big cam or the roar of an open exhaust system. Of course one of our resident Europeans added the high RPM screen of an F-1 engine. He’s a genius, so we let it slide.

The sound and smell of a burnout also ranked very high on the list, but that is where the similarities ended. Depending on our passions outside the office, the answers started deviating. The crackle and smell of Nitromethane ranked high on my list but also received weird looks for the street racers. Racing gas and alcohol also made the list from several people. Regardless of the fuel of choice. We all agreed the smell of freshly sprayed racing surface with VHT was heavenly.

The smell of a new car interior was on the list too many times to be left out. One of our techs told me about his favorite air freshener, not fully understanding the question. New guys are good for a few laughs anywhere.

What originally started this discussion was the power adders. Did you know that with a custom tune from our CMR software you can calibrate your vehicle’s tune for just about any power adder to any car or truck we support? You can find out more about CMR and network of custom tuners on our website www.diablosport.com, or through the ongoing series of entries highlighting our CMR tuners in this blog. Make sure you look out for future entries on a CMR tuner near you.