Why indicator ticks and parking bleeps can drive customers away

You probably have a good idea of your dream car — its colour, shape, how fast it will go and how good you’ll look behind the wheel. You might even imagine the sound of its engine as it purrs along the road.

But how about the sound of its door or boot lid closing, the tick of its indicator or those irritating parking bleeps?

They’re more important than you might think. The motor industry has long acknowledged that they play a vital, if subliminal, role in helping you choose the right car, and invest considerable sums researching and engineering every sound you hear — with varying degrees of success.

Now a London firm has produced some figures on the phenomenon, using the Bipolar Emotional Response Test (BERT). And they’ve shared some of the results with the Standard.

Condiment Junkie, a “sensory branding and design agency”, recorded a variety of different in-car sounds from a range of high-end vehicles, before asking a panel of motorists to place the noises on a scale ranging from beautiful to ugly. More than 100 people revealed their perceptions of craftsmanship (was the car hand-crafted or mass produced?), power, beauty, build quality and price range (premium or cheap?).

Each time a participant was played a sound, they had to move a slider between a pair of opposite reactions to the point they felt reflected the noise. The results make interesting reading.

The sounds included indicator ticks, warning gongs and parking sensor bleeps, recorded from a 2014 Mercedes-Benz C-Class, a 2014 Range Rover Sport, an ageing 2000 Jaguar S-Type and a slightly dated 2005 Porsche 911.

Of the four indicator sounds the Jaguar’s were rated the most beautiful, while the Mercedes’ sounds scored significantly lower. However, the Mercedes’ warning sounds won the highest rating, while those belonging to the Range Rover were judged “significantly more powerful and solid” — as befits the brand.

When it came to parking sensors the Range Rover’s performed best in the tests, while the Mercedes’ sounded “mass-produced and ugly”. Averaged out across all sounds, the Range Rover came top, scoring highly on “power and solidity”. The Jaguar tones came second, while the sonic qualities of the Mercedes and Porsche were characterised overall as cheap and ugly — in total contrast to the premium nature of the cars themselves.

It’s only a snapshot of cars at a given time in their life cycle, but did the research give any clues as to what consumers really want? Yes — Condiment Junkie designed three new indicator sounds and tested those, too. Their experts mixed sounds from a vintage British sports car, a woman’s heels on a pavement and instruments from cinematic musical scores.