They Tried to Shut Me Down for Telling the Truth About These Car Brands

you know the saying don't reinvent the wheel well it's not just the wheel that car makers don't reinvent it's often the engine the motor train the chassis and thousands of other car parts too they do this to make car manufacturing commercially profitable it takes a lot of investment to create a car from scratch so it's common for car makers to reuse platforms and parts especially if they're two brands within the same company but you know what other brands are in a volkswagen growth well apart from volkswagen and audi the group also owns bentley bugatti lamborghini and porsche or should i say porsche so if you're driving an audi does that mean you might have a whole lot of bugatti under your hood well audi certainly does share parts with lamborghini in fact back in 2008 there were a lot of complaints that audi r8 was sharing a little too much with this lamborghini gallardo cousin eventually the president of the company announced that they would start limiting shared parts to 20 presumably the complaints are from the lamborghini customers after all who would complain if they bought a volkswagen and discovered a whole lot of lamborghini under the hood so what does all this mean for you well like we said it might mean your car is a little bugatti unders hood which is great it also means you probably don't know who made the car you're driving the trend for car companies to buy other car companies or form alliances or partnerships is not new car companies have been sharing or copying technology since cars were first invented cadillac's first car the 1903 model runabout was virtually identical to the 1903 ford model aa that was because henry ford had a fight with his original backers and left the company but he left behind the almost ready for production car he was working on henry leland convinced the investors to keep the company going they changed the name of the company to cadillac and they manufactured the car but this time henry ford had started a new company the ford motor company both companies released their first car within months of each other the detroit car scene was certainly very cozy henry ford's new backers were the dodge brothers who would go on to start their own car company henry leland would leave cadillac to start the lincoln car company which ford would later buy in 1922 but the man who probably was leading this trend was durant of general motors he had this idea of a large automobile company with lots of independent subsidiaries and component companies he started general motors with buick and oldsmobile he then quickly added cadillac elmore and oakland a predecessor of ponte in 1908 gm were already using a single chassis for three different brands later chrysler would do the same for plymouth desoto and dodge cars toyota started their car company by copying the desoto in kichiro toyota realized he would never catch up to the american car companies if he started from scratch but once he got going he set the company on the path of innovation this would lead to toyota becoming a world leader so right from the start car companies were copying each other buying each other or becoming each other's buddies in order to compete and nothing much has changed since then so here's the big question is the car you're driving owned or not if you're driving a honda no one owns you honda owns honda and acura it's luxury brand they've also got their own aircraft company same goes for ford it's just ford and lincoln which ford bought from henry leland in 1922. over the years ford owned or had major stakes in volvo jaguar land rover mazda mercury and aston martin but all these brands were either sold or shut down so now it's just back to ford and lincoln of course this doesn't absolutely guarantee your ford is made by ford when is a ford not a ford when it's a fiat here's the ford here's the fiat can you tell the difference the reason they look so similar is that they're built on the same platform they share about eighty percent of the same components and both are built in the same fiat factory in tichi poland ford wasn't planning to manufacture too many of these cars so they wanted the partnership with fiat now if you're driving a dodge things get even more complicated it's unlikely a dodge was manufactured before 1928 if it was then it was made by dodge pure and simple after the dodge brothers died the company was bought by chrysler this purchase made chrysler grow five times its size overnight it became the third biggest car company in detroit after general motors and ford then between 1998 and 2007 chrysler was bought by daimler benz a german company often referred to as mercedes then in 2014 dodge as part of chrysler was bought by fiat an italian car maker founded in 1899 so it's one of the oldest car companies in the world the group became known as the fiat chrysler group currently they've got fiat ram chrysler jeep alpha romeo and maserati under the hood confused already let's just say if you're dodge or jeep you've got a very big family of lots of step siblings up until 2016 fiat also owned 90 of ferrari how about subaru owned or not well let's first start with your real name it's fuji heavy industries secondly you're not fully owned by anyone but you're 20 part toyota that's why subaru will stop producing many cars for the japanese market quite soon they'd rather get them from toyota's subsidiary dai hot suit which brings us to toyota no one owns toyota but toyota has their fingers and a few car makers toyota owns daihatsu twenty percent of subaru five percent of mazda five percent of suzuki and 2.8 of yamaha toyota acquires about a three percent stake in tesla as the automakers partner up to develop electric cars and develop production systems they also have a shipping company toyo fuji shipping we're not going to go into all the other bits and pieces like parts and steel companies they own but it's worth mentioning they own 2.8 of panasonic and then 34 of nagoya broadcasting network back up a second did we say toyota isn't owned we need to correct that actually mazda has a 0.25 stake in toyota and suzuki has a 0.2 stake the two companies exchange small stakes as a sign of their partnership toyota recently also partnered with bmw to build the engine for the 2020 gr super race car supras traditionally had straight six engines but toyota didn't build engines like that anymore so they partnered with bmw to make the production of the supra commercially viable toyota also has an alliance with tesla who also has an alliance with other car companies over the years many car companies don't become family they just become friends the renault nissan mitsubishi alliance began in 1999. it's a cross-sharing agreement then they extended the friendship group ted daimler chinese dongfeng and russians abdavas if you're driving a land rover or jaguar you were owned by ford until 2008 now you're owned by indian car maker tata motors tata motor started out in the commercial car industry by forming a partnership with daimler-benz they entered the passenger vehicle market 1991. in india tata has a joint venture with fiat which gives them access to fiat's diesel engine technology and transmission technology we've mentioned the daimler ben's name a few times already carl bans at his invention in 1886. benz merged with daimler back in the early 1920s then they merged with chrysler currently the company owns mercedes-benz and smart micro cars and sub compacts if you're driving a mini then you're owned by bmw bmw also owns another iconic british car maker's rolls-royce bmw was already supplying rolls-royce with engines by the time it purchased the brand in 1998 after a strange bidding war with volkswagen things change so much in the world of car makers then who knows who will be buying or selling who next believe it or not modern car companies artistically develop and enhance the sounds that their cars produce that's because many consumers care how their cars sound a long time ago telephone companies worked hard to reduce noise and interference during the phone calls they succeeded in suppressing noise so much that users actually began to complain the reason is because of consumer expectations the lack of noise gave consumers the impression that their connection was cut off they just weren't used to it so phone companies started generating comfort noise a synthetic background noise added to the signal so that people during a forced pause could understand that the call hadn't dropped and the line was still connected actually radio and wireless communications use comfort noise too to fill the artificial silence in transmission while similar thing occurs with car makers many automakers have been able to reduce loud noise even at high revs as an engineering triumph but apparently this inadvertently caused an opposite problem for instance many drivers with a v8 actually love the gurgling throaty engine sound and they associate that sound with engine power so a v8 without its recognizable primal sound just doesn't feel like serious muscle but more like a car gone soft car makers picked up on that and they realized that the sound of a car inspires drivers perception of power in fact we can see this directly in the electric vehicle market initially drivers and pedestrians were enthused that electric cars were so quiet and had no engine noise it was something ev companies were proud of but eventually it became a safety concern because now it was so quiet that pedestrians couldn't sense when a car was nearby that's why car makers had artificially designed sounds and now you have electric cars that generate fake engine sounds through hidden speakers even at low speeds sounds like a fun job to design sound makes me wonder how sound engineers even approach the task take for example the creators of the plug-in electric sedan fisker karma 2011-2012 they equipped the car with an artificial sound that was futuristic and sci-fi something between the sound of a spaceship and an f-1 car another example is nissan for the nissan leaf the company invited specialists from hollywood to design a sound similar to the car sound in the cult film blade runner i mean if engine sounds are fake then you might as well make them fun so you can see how car sound design has become a science and art of its own they're literally producing mechanical symphonies in almost any popular sedan or pickup car makers carefully tune the sound whether digitally or by manipulating parts like a muffler pipes or insulation materials it was a lot of buzz for example when the fairly quiet 2015 ford mustang eagle boost faked engine noise via stereo using its active noise control system one of their ads mentioned that the v8 engine had long been considered the mating call of the mustang but that the new sound processing and amplification system delivered a more graceful growl and low frequency sense of omnipotence at the same time ford consulted with different motors forums to get feedback on sound concepts that motorists found most appealing volkswagen uses a special vehicle audio system called sound car it's german for sound actuator the system simulates engine noise in the cabin of some volkswagen cars it was introduced in 2011 on the vw's off gti and has also been used in the jetta gli and beetle turbo people have described the sound generated by their system as fuzzy fizzy growl in 2009 lexus hired yamaha to create acoustic design for the engine of the lexus lfa the goal was to generate dramatic acoustics of a high-grade engine which consumers expected from a mass-produced sports car bmw was one of the first brands to introduce artificial engine and exhaust sound into the cabin later they added a feature to its performance cars adjustable engine noise most new performance bmws come with four different settings for the fake engine noise sporty balance reduced and one additional setting that changes the engine sound based on driving mode well all this says one thing how a car sounds matters so where does the sound come from the sound of the engine that we hear as the car passes by is impacted by many factors including for example the number of cylinders their location whether it's in-line or v-shaped engine the shape of the combustion chambers valve timing the type and setting of the fuel system and ignition the sound is also influenced by the shape and size of the channels of the cylinder head the design of the gas distribution mechanism the number and size of valves the presence of turbines or compressors not just that but you also have the exhaust system which interestingly enough was created in order to suppress sound and noise produced from a car but at the heart of it is the engine and exhaust system let's take a quick look at each first let's talk about sound as you know sound is a wave and like any wave sound is characterized by amplitude and frequency pretty much you can think of amplitude as volume or loudness and it's measured in decibels and the wave frequency corresponds to the pitch which is measured in hertz a slow wave produces a lower pitch a fast wave has a higher pitch when it comes to pitch the average person's hearing range is between 20 hertz and 20 000 hertz now let's get under the hood so we have air and fuel they mix and explode in the cylinder then the pressurized air or exhaust gets sent into the exhaust manifold each stroke of the cylinder sends out its own blast wave in the form of a pulse the number of pulses your engine outputs per second or frequency corresponds to the pitch the higher the engine rpm the more pulses you have and therefore the higher the pitch the lower the engine speed the lower the pitch and that long poor low roar take for example a single cylinder from a four-stroke engine that's idling at a thousand rpm divide that by 60 seconds and you get almost 17 revolutions per second one hertz is one evolution per second so 17 revolutions per second produces a frequency of 17 hertz but remember that was for just one cylinder now let's take a v8 you have eight cylinders but the v8 fires two cylinders at once for every two turns of the crankshaft that means in one revolution only half of the cylinders are fired so that's four cylinders remember one cylinder generator frequency of 17 hertz so four cylinders generate a frequency of 68 hertz that's the typical pitch of an american v8 when it's idling ever notice that americans vh generally produce more throaty where the european ones generally have a higher pitch why is that reason is most american v8s have cross plane pranks where the lobes sit perpendicular from each other this results in sporadic explosions in the cylinders and therefore you get that lower guttural rumble sound actually most european eight-cylinder engines have flat crankshaft where the lobes are flat or 180 degrees so each cylinder fires from the one opposite across from it and that's more uniform consisting firing in the cylinders which is why european v8s have a more uniform less throaty noise and higher pitch most of the sound we hear from an engine is also impacted by the exhaust system of the car think of it as a vocal cords and voice of your car but don't be deceived either no muffler or exhaust system will make an inline force unlike a v8 muscle car as mentioned before the sound produced by a car depends on the engine the layout and various additional sounds emitted by the car like the resonant frequency of the engine bay exhaust pipe diameter and so forth for example an exhaust with a larger diameter allows more gases to pass in the same time as a smaller diameter and this significantly affects the sound it produces giving it more base that's why every major car company has a team that experiments with pipe diameters mufflers muffler bushings resonators catalysts and even insulation materials all this starts to shape a unique engine sound let's look at a few different exhaust layouts the h-pipe x-pipe and y-pipe and how they each impact sound differently of course the most obvious difference is how they look they each look like the alphabet letter than aimed at but they all have different flow patterns for the exhaust gases and different ways to flow heat and gas from the exhaust manifold to the muffler the h-pipe produces a more classic muscle car growl and is better at balancing sound they also boost torque at the lower rpm band x-pipes even out the exhaust flow and streamline the exhaust gases they also produce slightly more power later in the rpm range than the h or y pipes typically they produce sounds that are a bit raspier and louder compared to the other pipes the y-pipe is a setup where two exhaust pipes merge into one as a rule the larger diameter pipe is used after the couple you can see y-pipe's an older stock v6 mustang but if you want to boost power and efficiency of your car's exhaust flow you should consider upgrading to a dual setup to increase airflow so there you have it car technology isn't just about how it operates but it's also driven by how it sounds on the road and inside the cabin sound is subjective to consumer demand that's why each car has its own craft and unique voice both inherent and artificial it's a whole bunch of science math and music that goes into crafting a sound you might have heard of the movement called skeuomorphism which is the design concept of making something digital or virtual mimic conventional real-life counterparts and how they appear or how the user interacts with them it's like how a calendar app on your phone can be designed to look like an actual paper calendar well anyway we see car makers taking schoolomorphic audio to a whole new level what do you think share your voice comment below and let me know your opinion on what's your favorite car sound and why if you like this episode please subscribe to my channel for more videos on car technology and history thanks for your support [Applause] you

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 326,115

Rating: 4.9117785 out of 5

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, car advice, car companies, car companies that got worse, car company, car company owners, car company shut down, companies, scotty, scotty channel, scotty kilmer channel, shut down, ‍shutting, shutting down, shutting down channel, shutting down youtube channel, truth, car brand, car brands, best car brand, worst car brand, difference car brands, car brands explained

Id: ZKKrgORhuyM

Length: 18min 18sec (1098 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021