Cars You Can Identify From Noise Alone

[richtea78]

Ex Girlfriends dad had a transit van that had a very loud engine, that got me out of a few sticky situations

[odyssey2200]

Anything with an old Ford OHC engine with a dodgy cam shaft

clacl-clack-clack,

[Mark_Karting]

Impreza
Ford Ka
older Peugeot diesels

[Six Fiend]

In addition to the 911s/Morris Minor/Mini and many others listed so far...

2CV

Triumph 2500, Vitesse and GT6, all similar but different enough.

Jaguar MkII

Austin/Morris 1300 - like a Mini but more!

Alfa GTV6 (the old one!)

[Fossilface]

Early E-Types
Big Healeys
MGBs

[paulrussell]

Rousch Mustang and Impreza.

[calibrax]

There's no engine sound more distinctive than the original Beetle. Even my mum could identify it, so it must be so!

[obscene]

Ferrari 355
E46 M3 CSL

[Hub]

KMud said:

VAG PD TDIs.

This, sadly!

BMW starter motors are quite distinctive.

[roachcoach]

Black cab

[LeoSayer]

Quite a lot when I think about it:

Peugeot/Citroen 1.4 Carb 85bhp from 205XS / AX GT
205 1.6 GTi / 309 XS
205/309 1.9 GTi
Ferrari 355
Subary Impreza Turbo
Porsche 964
Porsche 993
MK3 Golf / Corrado / Sharan VR6
MK5 Cortina 1.6
Merc SLK/CLK 230K (sounds like the Cortina to me)
Volvo 5 cyl
Gallardo
V10 M5

I'm pretty sure I could recognise a Zonda but I've only ever seen them in car shows and on tv.

You may notice there's no diesels in the list as they seem very hard to tell apart and I have tried. The current 6 cyl BMW diesels sounds quite nice, it's probably the only one I would wind my window down to listen to.

[LuS1fer]

paulrussell said:

Rousch Mustang and Impreza.

It's Roush and has the same engine as any other Mustang.

I'd say any A-series car like the Moggy 1000/Austin A40 which had a different transmission whine to the Minis and the old Ford ohvs in Anglias and Cortinas et al. the starter motor was very distinctive - they went on for long enough.

[giggity]

Mini Cooper S - SuperCharged
Merc C63 AMG
BMW M3 E46

[I'm Rick james]

Any subaru.

[0aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

A transit went by earlier - a noise (horrible) you can't mistake, why do they sound so distinctive?

[MNBrennan]

Subaru Impreza. Every time

[Pothole]

my neighbour's diesel Focus.

[0aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

Why the Focus? We have one and it is ultra dull

Subaru seems to get the vote here

[Vipers]

The only noise I could identify 100% before you saw it was an old Triumph bike, I think the noise was the timing chain, very distinctive.

[Daniel1]

Can detect the rasp of a vtec.

I did get confused by a rather nice sounding bus once though, thinking it was something else.