How And Why Jaguar Turned Down Its Supercharger Whine

The supercharged engines used by Jaguar don’t make quite the same sound as they did a few years ago. We’re not talking about the switch to new exhaust systems with petrol particulate filters - no, we’re on about the superchargers.

In the F-Type, the whine from the superchargers used on the V8 and the recently discontinued V6 has noticeably reduced in volume. We haven’t been imagining things - when speaking to Jaguar Land Rover Vehicle Integration Manager Tanmay Dube at the launch for the new 2020 model year F-Type, he confirmed that there was a change around two years ago.

The superchargers themselves haven’t been changed; rather the insulation. “The engine cover and the sealing at the end of the bonnet [were altered] - that was the main input to reduce the whine,” Dube said.

The reason for the change was primarily to make the car a better cruiser. “We wanted to make sure that the car was something you could use all the time, on long journeys and so on, and [it was] one element that made the refinement better,” Dube explained. The changes that the engineering and quality team came up with were based on customer feedback from various feedback was sources - including from dealerships and even owner comments on Internet forums.

For the latest F-Type, nothing has changed. “We did consider for this model if we wanted to do anything more on it - bring it back a little bit, or reduce it further for refinement,” Dube said, adding, “We assessed a bunch of options but we ended up deciding on keeping it the way it has been.”

Dube does admit that there are many advocates of the noise. “There is a fair share of people who really like supercharger whine. You could make it go away completely but we didn’t want to go that far. It just had to be a bit more subtle.”

Indeed, you can still - just about - hear the whine on F-Types built after the changes were applied. We’d just take a little more noise if it was us. Wouldn’t you?