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Classic Car Exhaust Technology

• 10/4/2016

If the digitally manipulated sounds of modern highly efficient low capacity forced induction engines leave you cold – the characterful and more expressive sounds emanating from classic sports and competition cars, are often a key emotional component behind enjoying your classic car motoring.

If you are serious about getting a system engineered with modern technology and materials but retaining an outward appearance of originality or actually restoring the original exhaust – BTB Exhausts in Daventry routinely engineer exhausts for some of the most exotic historic road and racecars. Joe Ellis - boss of BTB Exhausts elaborates:

"Although traditionally we have always been involved at the sharp end of development on modern motorsport and low volume OEM prototype applications – a significant proportion of our work these days is for the UK historic racing community. Development of historic racing cars is now a major enterprise and people come to us with demanding briefs accommodating performance, noise control, sound, weight and outward period of authenticity parameters.”

“We have done lots of classic Ferrari systems for models including 250 GTO, 330 LMBs, 330 P3, and 330 P4 to 288 GTO Evoluziones and a large number of the road converted Mclaren F1 GTR's run our exhausts, at the other end of the scale we made the system for the giant killing Austin A40 racecar raced at Goodwood.”

Exhausts have been traditionally perceived as consumables and you are not going to find many original systems left on cars these days on cars which are over 30 years old. That said, BTB have seen a marked increase in demand for restoration of original systems – simply due to the fact that a lot of the remanufactured systems for modern classics are not built to the same standards of quality and originality.

“Now some of the modern classics have appreciated in value, coupled with the market’s obsession with originality – we have undertaken a number of restoration exercises recently where the original exhaust is sympathetically refurbished. We are restoring a 1992 Porsche 964 RS system at the moment which will be restored to as it left the factory and externally indistinguishable from new.” Joe comments.

Quite where you draw the line on a car’s authenticity based around having all it’s original consumables is questionable – I would not be particularly enamoured with the prospect of running around on 30 year old tyres – but giving an old car back it’s original voice appeals.

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