Nürburgring lap times are all good and well and a great marketing tool. However, for the vast majority of your average consumer, how fast a professional racing driver can lap the Nordschleife makes little to no difference at all when it comes to choosing a car.
Sure, it can be a measure of a car’s handling abilities in extremes. In everyday driving, however, other things are much more important – unless your name is Walther Rorhl or you are a test driver.
Looks are important, and handling and ride even more so. Safety is, of course, paramount. Have you ever considered another aspect that is omnipresent whenever you turn on the ignition key?
We’re talking about noise. In the case of the brand new ATS, Cadillac claims that it has paid extra attention to this issue in order to ensure that its new luxury sedan sounds like it should.
“Cadillac customers expect a level of refinement beyond what most cars have”, says Kyle Stanforth, noise and vibration engineer on the Cadillac performance team. “Yes, it’s quiet, but it’s more than that. They also love to hear the sound of refined power when they ask for it. So when you open it up, you not only feel the power, you hear it too.”
To achieve this, Cadillac engineers working on the ATS shaped the intake system to maximize airflow and minimize unwanted engine noise at the same time. They applied the same philosophy to the exhaust system and lowered the level of noise at idle and cruising speeds.
This, and a lot of sound-deadening, should probably do the trick. But the ATS has another ace up its sleeve: it’s the Bose Active Sound Management system which monitors engine noise levels in the interior and generates a cancellation signal to make them inaudible. Bose’s technology has the added benefit of reducing the amount of sound insulating materials, thus contributing in the vehicle’s total weight reduction.
“The ATS sounds distinctly like a Cadillac should”, says Stanforth. “We’ve created a signature sound that expresses Cadillac power, refinement and luxury – and we make it sing.”
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