Tuning A Corvette Engine
What do you do as a Chevy engineer?
I make Corvettes sound like Corvettes. I fine-tune what the engine sounds like, both inside and outside the car, at our Milford, Mich., testing facility, the Milford Proving Ground. There's a 65-year heritage behind the way these performance cars sound, so we take the work very seriously. I'm the composer of a symphony, in a way.
How would you describe the Corvette's engine sound?
It's different for each of our three latest models. The base model's sound is the tamest. The Grand Sport, our midlevel model, has a wider body and sits lower, and the engine sound is more rambunctious. The Z06, our supercar, has a powerful, aggressive sound.
Charlie Rusher, 31, is a noise and vibration engineer at Chevrolet in Milford, Mich.
Have you always been into cars?
I've liked mechanical things since I was a kid. As a teenager, I attended stock car races with my best friend, who raced on dirt tracks. I also helped him work on his car. I loved being around that culture. At 16, I got my license and my first truck. I'd tinker with the engine and the exhaust system, which I work on now.
How do you develop the sound?
The sound is a combination of the engine and exhaust system outputs, and there needs to be a balance between the two. I manually adjust pipes in the exhaust system and record engine sounds digitally and adjust them. We place microphones all over the car for recording. I might do 40 iterations of the engine and exhaust system sounds before I'm satisfied.
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Source: Patricia Olsen - New York Times