Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) has announced that it will be introducing a stealth mode for the 2018 Mustang for the purpose of silencing the exhaust.
The automotive giant announced quite a powerful offering with the 2018 Mustang which will feature a V8 engine that will produce 460 horsepower. This was good news for Mustang fans especially because it is 6 more horsepower more than the Chevrolet Camaro from rival automotive manufacturer General Motors Company (NYSE:GM). However, that kind of power comes with a lot of noise which might be too much especially for quiet neighborhoods. Ford plans to eliminate that problem by introducing a quiet mode that will slash the exhaust noise by half.
“I love the sound of the V8, but it can be loud, and you can’t annoy people like that in your neighbourhood. It sounds so cool, but I thought, there has to be a way to give people more control over the engine’s sound,” stated Steve von Forester, the head of the user experience team at Ford.
It is super loud if Ford executives think it is too loud
Von Forester was reportedly driving a Shelby Mustang GT350 out of his driveway when he realized that it was too loud. One of the neighbors was so disturbed by it that they called the police. That incident prompted Von Forester to seek out a way to dial down the noise and that is how the idea of the muffled mode came about. He and his fellow engineers came up with the feature which is considered the first ever quiet mode in the industry.
Drivers have the option of choosing the quiet mode when the vehicle starts up or they can program specific periods in which they want the feature to be activated. They can the return to the normal mode once they are out of areas such as a quiet neighborhood where the normal sound is too much. The silence mode drops the sound by roughly 10 decibels to the range of 72 decibels which is much more comfortable to the ears.
Ford stock closed the latest trading session on Monday at $11.22.