Scientific basis of a loud paint job - May 13, 2008
The strange links between different senses have been demonstrated again, this time by a new study showing that a car sounds louder when it’s painted red.
Researchers in Germany asked 16 people to rate the perceived loudness of the sound of an accelerating car played through headphones. Noises were accompanied by one of four pictures of an Aston Martin V8 coloured red, blue, dark-green or light green.
In the latest issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America they report that “it seems that in most cases the sounds associated with images of red or dark-green vehicles were rated louder than those combined with light-green or blue ones”.
The differences are small: around 1 dB and with a maximum observed difference of 3 dB. But they were statistically significant, which supports similar previous findings with trains, say Daniel Menzel, of the Technische Universitat Munchen, and colleagues.
They suggest in their paper, fairly reasonably, that people probably associate some colours with sports cars – such as red and dark (“British racing”) green – and so subconsciously expect them to be louder. They do not say that this will now lead to the of-so-boyish pranksters who present the BBC’s Top Gear devising a competition for the loudest paint job. But you just know that it will…
Image: Getty
