6 Recent Films That Got Car Sounds Badly Wrong

Sadly, filmmakers aren't interested in catering for pedantic petrolheads, as these movie engine sound gaffes prove...

26 Sep 2016

6 Recent Films That Got Car Sounds Badly Wrong

A few years ago, I had a jolly big rant about films using the wrong sounds for particular cars. I’ve since spoken to a few people who work in the field of audio post production, and predictably the reason is ‘dramatic license’ - in other words filmakers prefer making things sound cool, rather than realistic.

That’s fair enough, especially when the vast majority of the audience isn’t going to give a damn. But as an utterly pedantic petrolhead, I still want to moan when things aren’t quite right, and if you’ll indulge my curmudgeonly nature, here are a few zingers which aggravated me recently:

Sadly, we don’t live in a world where the M3 still has a V8. But in the fantasy land of the movies, this turbo straight-six F80 version is given an extra pair of cylinders it doesn’t have IRL…

Oh, how happy I was when I watched The Last Witch Hunter the other week. Not because it’s a good film (it isn’t), but because the sound of the Aston Martin Rapide S in it is spot-on. It’s not just a V12 as it should be; I’m 99.99 per cent sure the particular V12 sound used even belongs to an Aston engine.

However, all that good work is undone by one scene (we can’t find a clip of the actual gaffe, but the car appears in the above trailer at the 25sec mark) when it sounds remarkably like a V10 Audi R8. So close…

Last time I checked, the Tesla Model S didn’t have an internal combustion engine. But we can’t blame Kit Harrington for not noticing this omission - the Lord Commander does have a lot on right now, after all.

The sight of Indycars in the unforgivably boring Focus should have been a good thing. However, while the Indycars themselves were the real deal, the sounds dubbed over the top seem to be sourced from V10 F1 cars.

Yep, this one’s a bike rather than a car, but it’s worth mentioning since this is something that filmmakers get wrong all the damn time: a Ducati with an inline-four engine. I get why: most people expect superbikes to have screaming four-cylinder engines, but what’s annoying here is in a previous scene, it sounds like a twin just as it should.

The Fast and Furious franchise has a pretty shoddy track record for engine sounds, and the latest installment is no different. V10 Maserati Ghibli, anyone?

Speaking of incorrectly placed V10s and Furious 7, how about this flat-six powered Lykan that sounds a lot like a Lexus LFA?

We could probably make a whole list out of Furious 7’s engine sound gaffes, so let’s just leave it at these two for now.

What other engine sound mess-ups have you seen in films of the last two years?

Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.

Comments

Transformers: the veyron sound alike a gallardo

i threw a fit during Fast 6 when they gave Shaw’s “LeMans turbo diesel” flip car a Lamborghini V12 soundtrack while a chevy small block V8 was visible hanging off the back

Exactly. That was a real royal triple f#ck up.

The Car Guys movie done by non car guys (you know that Vin Diesel is a bad driver, do you ?) What can you expect?

It’s like expecting a sexy lap dance done by a fat american chick .
You really have to be high or drunk wasted not to notice there’s something wrong there.

I can tell you that the sound of Mission Impossible and Furious 7 are right.. Their OEM exhaust sound diffrent than typical v6tt or v8 engine

The s1000rr in mission impossible are totally wrong too :/

Don`t forget that the white Supra from F7 sounds exactly , and I mean EXACTLY like the Eclipse from the first movie.

considering that both the Eclipse and Supra are well-known JDMs with aftermarket performance parts, it is entirely possible that they could sound similar.

There’s a rumor going on that they actually used the sound of the Eclipse from the first film for the Supra. I don’t know if this is true.

I think Fast and Furious 6 takes it with Owen Shaw’s ‘wedge’ car. Someone describing the car says it uses a “turbo diesel engine, just like Le Mans prototypes.” The noise, however, is definitely that of a V10 N/A Formula 1 car!