As someone who had a rep for imitating engine sounds as a little kid, and who knows how boring long distance driving can be and cause one to find ways to keep the brain stimulated (if only mildly) I can really relate to this video. And he’s very good.
Aha! Well of course I did – but my mother complained that I put too much emphasis on screeching tires while imitating a car braking – “EEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRCH!”
Guy’s been on the road WAY too long. Needs to pull over and catch forty winks in the sleeper, LOL!
And of COURSE I made engine noises when I was a kid when I was playing with my toy cars and/or riding my bicycle. And I think it’s a safe bet almost everyone else here did, too.
For a while the thing to do when I was about 11 was attach playing cards with a wooden clothespin to the bicycle forks and get a “motorcycle engine sound”. The more you could attach, the better. And the faster you went, the louder they got.
I had a Spanish teacher in middle school who told the class that in her many years of teaching, she found boys, over girls, were much more likely to be able to roll their R’s.
Her theory? A childhood spent playing with toy cars and imitating engine noises.
Yes, as a youngster. I suspect it stopped sometime after my father observed no car (at least at that time) had as many gears for the number of times I upshifted.
Here’s one from a Dutch TV-show. The interviewer asks why the biker is so popular among the members of the Bikers Club from Twente. His “answer” sounds like the dialect in that specific region (eastern Netherlands). In the end it turns out he doesn’t know…
On a more serious note, I saw a fantastic Dutch doco on Satudarah MC a few months back. Apart from Hunter Thompson’s 60s book on the Hells Angels, I’ve never felt so privy to the day-to-day of these types of organisations.
You bet I did! Too young to drive, it didn’t matter. I was my own VW powered Dune Buggy. I even changed the sounds of the exhaust from time to time after I would “increase” the engine’s performance. Mom thought it was silly, but knew it was harmless. Dad wasn’t quite so sure about that. And yes, my dune buggy also had way more gears than any other car on the road.
Yes, absolutely. When I was a little tyke, the throbbing V8s of the 50s made the coolest sounds which my brother and I imitating by saying dig-a-dig-a-dig-a… , varying the pitch to simulate gear changes.
Today’s 4 cylinders with fart cans sound absolutely silly compared to those V8s!
Do you have to ask? Yes! I remember doing it while riding my first 10 speed bike and rowing through the gears, it sounded like th car chase in Bullitt when I’d ride by!
Yes! Definitely. And occasionally still do so affectionately when the burble of the Oldsmobile V8 or the whine of the TurboHydramatic that I’ve become familiar with over the last couple of old GMs I’ve owned (or the somewhat different whine of the Ford AOD in my first car) so moves me as I’m driving along.
And even though I don’t usually *make* noises, I do love hearing the noises, especially if I’ve been driving a rental or riding in someone else’s car, and then take out the Oldsmobile. It’s part of the experience–I remember buying my former Buick, and at the time it had been 3 years since I had sold my Cadillac Brougham and I had been carless in the time since then. On the test drive, that Hydramatic whine rang out as we eased out of the parking lot….it was like coming home.
I also still enjoy the motor imitations that Marshall Dodge and the other guy whose name escapes me did in the “Bert and I” narrations.
I still do. I’ve been told I can imitate my 36hp Beetle engine idle and rev. I also do a pretty good stock split window Bus with reduction boxes accelerating.
1. The granny gear of our school bus, which accelerated the big rig (1958 GMC with new-fangled quad headlights) from 0-5 mph in 20 sec.
2. The local hot-rodders would, nervously, rev their patina’d, gap-toothed (lacking grilles) ’52 Chevy’s …… then sputter & miss cylinders as they lurched ahead in 1st gear. I could do it !
3. As I ran down the basement steps, I knew that I’d better slow down before reaching the bottom. Time to upshift, and to whine out the corresponding slow-down.
Of course! Didn’t everyone do it? ? Airplanes too! My favorite impression was doing the sound of a 12cyl Merlin powered P51 Mustang flying overhead, mimicking the Doppler effect, of course.
Yep. Certainly with toy cars – didn’t we all?
When I was young we had an old plastic squeeze pump in the bathroom. It made a beaut bath toy for me. I found that with the right amount of water in it, I could do a mean Y-block Ford imitation by blowing into the inlet tube: blub-blub-blub-blub-blub. Drove my parents mad.
Back when I was a kid each brand of car had its own distinct sound which I would try to imitate, VW’s were easy, I used to force air past my tongue to make a rattling sound. I used to try to make the sound of the Chrysler reduction gear starter, which, I must confess I still do.
A 3 banger diesel is also easy, idle is just “rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr” with the throat and revving up is doing some kind of “zzzzzzzzzzzzz”, and increasing pitch, simultaneously with the idle
I started when I was a very little kid—my folks’ and grandparents’ Slant-6 Darts provided ample imitables right from the moment the starter was engaged, as did the Ford F-700 school buses with spur gear C6(?) automatics.
I was walking in downtown Santa Cruz yesterday, where we certainly encounter people making strange sounds, and my attention was caught by a women on a bicycle weaving along the sidewalk towards me, making some odd noises, though I assumed she was just clearing her throat. She smiled at me and said “sorry, my spark plugs are fouled”.
I imitated the Chrysler Corporation “Hamtramck Hummingbird” starter crank sound a lot when I was a kid. Very distinctive compared with the GM and Ford cars of the time.
As someone who had a rep for imitating engine sounds as a little kid, and who knows how boring long distance driving can be and cause one to find ways to keep the brain stimulated (if only mildly) I can really relate to this video. And he’s very good.
Thanks for sharing; I got a kick out of it.
That could be a QOTD – I wonder how many of us imitated car noises when we were young?
Good idea. I just changed the title.
Aha! Well of course I did – but my mother complained that I put too much emphasis on screeching tires while imitating a car braking – “EEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRCH!”
Of course I did!
Annoyed the heck out of some people which only added to the fun.
Guy’s been on the road WAY too long. Needs to pull over and catch forty winks in the sleeper, LOL!
And of COURSE I made engine noises when I was a kid when I was playing with my toy cars and/or riding my bicycle. And I think it’s a safe bet almost everyone else here did, too.
For a while the thing to do when I was about 11 was attach playing cards with a wooden clothespin to the bicycle forks and get a “motorcycle engine sound”. The more you could attach, the better. And the faster you went, the louder they got.
This is classic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKFmc0oZXFI
I had a Spanish teacher in middle school who told the class that in her many years of teaching, she found boys, over girls, were much more likely to be able to roll their R’s.
Her theory? A childhood spent playing with toy cars and imitating engine noises.
Yes, as a youngster. I suspect it stopped sometime after my father observed no car (at least at that time) had as many gears for the number of times I upshifted.
You’d invented the 8-speed transmission ahead of its time; you were a visionary! 🙂
hehehehehehehe. this is a morning of mirth.
Reminds me of these guys
Here’s one from a Dutch TV-show. The interviewer asks why the biker is so popular among the members of the Bikers Club from Twente. His “answer” sounds like the dialect in that specific region (eastern Netherlands). In the end it turns out he doesn’t know…
hehehehe
On a more serious note, I saw a fantastic Dutch doco on Satudarah MC a few months back. Apart from Hunter Thompson’s 60s book on the Hells Angels, I’ve never felt so privy to the day-to-day of these types of organisations.
Satudarah is a relatively young MC that finds its roots in the Moluccan community. No Surrender MC is the most recent organization.
Love the martians! Or, as a friend called them, the “yup monsters”.
You bet I did! Too young to drive, it didn’t matter. I was my own VW powered Dune Buggy. I even changed the sounds of the exhaust from time to time after I would “increase” the engine’s performance. Mom thought it was silly, but knew it was harmless. Dad wasn’t quite so sure about that. And yes, my dune buggy also had way more gears than any other car on the road.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Yes, absolutely. When I was a little tyke, the throbbing V8s of the 50s made the coolest sounds which my brother and I imitating by saying dig-a-dig-a-dig-a… , varying the pitch to simulate gear changes.
Today’s 4 cylinders with fart cans sound absolutely silly compared to those V8s!
Do you have to ask? Yes! I remember doing it while riding my first 10 speed bike and rowing through the gears, it sounded like th car chase in Bullitt when I’d ride by!
Yes! Definitely. And occasionally still do so affectionately when the burble of the Oldsmobile V8 or the whine of the TurboHydramatic that I’ve become familiar with over the last couple of old GMs I’ve owned (or the somewhat different whine of the Ford AOD in my first car) so moves me as I’m driving along.
And even though I don’t usually *make* noises, I do love hearing the noises, especially if I’ve been driving a rental or riding in someone else’s car, and then take out the Oldsmobile. It’s part of the experience–I remember buying my former Buick, and at the time it had been 3 years since I had sold my Cadillac Brougham and I had been carless in the time since then. On the test drive, that Hydramatic whine rang out as we eased out of the parking lot….it was like coming home.
I also still enjoy the motor imitations that Marshall Dodge and the other guy whose name escapes me did in the “Bert and I” narrations.
I still do. I’ve been told I can imitate my 36hp Beetle engine idle and rev. I also do a pretty good stock split window Bus with reduction boxes accelerating.
I used to imitate siren noises, especially on long car trips. Made me very popular with my parents, as you can imagine.
I imitated them all —
1. The granny gear of our school bus, which accelerated the big rig (1958 GMC with new-fangled quad headlights) from 0-5 mph in 20 sec.
2. The local hot-rodders would, nervously, rev their patina’d, gap-toothed (lacking grilles) ’52 Chevy’s …… then sputter & miss cylinders as they lurched ahead in 1st gear. I could do it !
3. As I ran down the basement steps, I knew that I’d better slow down before reaching the bottom. Time to upshift, and to whine out the corresponding slow-down.
….. like it was yesterday ….
Of course! Didn’t everyone do it? ? Airplanes too! My favorite impression was doing the sound of a 12cyl Merlin powered P51 Mustang flying overhead, mimicking the Doppler effect, of course.
Yep. Certainly with toy cars – didn’t we all?
When I was young we had an old plastic squeeze pump in the bathroom. It made a beaut bath toy for me. I found that with the right amount of water in it, I could do a mean Y-block Ford imitation by blowing into the inlet tube: blub-blub-blub-blub-blub. Drove my parents mad.
Trains, Planes, and Automobile sounds…Thank god I’m not alone! Memories from childhood!
Add one more to this list!
Now (in my 40s) it’s more Honda 3 wheelers I “brap” about than cars or trucks.
Back when I was a kid each brand of car had its own distinct sound which I would try to imitate, VW’s were easy, I used to force air past my tongue to make a rattling sound. I used to try to make the sound of the Chrysler reduction gear starter, which, I must confess I still do.
Having grown up with 1.9 TDI engines, I used to imitate it starting and getting at idle, and still do.
https://youtu.be/wF5nCjZZYAo
“Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da”
(BTW that video is from a channel dedicated to engine idle sounds)
A 3 banger diesel is also easy, idle is just “rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr” with the throat and revving up is doing some kind of “zzzzzzzzzzzzz”, and increasing pitch, simultaneously with the idle
https://youtu.be/JaHSDdKxGiA
When I was a kid, I could do two engines quite accurately:
1. A 1970s Mercedes-Benz Diesel.
2. Four-pot Austin engine from the same era!
Curiously, nowadays I can imitate an old two stroke Vespa… It’s all in the throat.
I started when I was a very little kid—my folks’ and grandparents’ Slant-6 Darts provided ample imitables right from the moment the starter was engaged, as did the Ford F-700 school buses with spur gear C6(?) automatics.
I’m still trying to quit.
Sure I did, including two stroke engine ring-a-dings, or, like Walter Mitty, “pocketa-pocketa”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1939/03/18/the-secret-life-of-walter-james-thurber
I was walking in downtown Santa Cruz yesterday, where we certainly encounter people making strange sounds, and my attention was caught by a women on a bicycle weaving along the sidewalk towards me, making some odd noises, though I assumed she was just clearing her throat. She smiled at me and said “sorry, my spark plugs are fouled”.
Of course! My model planes and cars never moved silently. Shifting my 3 speed Schwinn always had the appropriate soundtrack.
Since no-one else posted it…..the ultimate people making car sounds video.
I imitated the Chrysler Corporation “Hamtramck Hummingbird” starter crank sound a lot when I was a kid. Very distinctive compared with the GM and Ford cars of the time.