The 997TT didn't have any sound fans, it had a big, undistinguished vacuum cleaner type woosh. It's tough to get an exhaust note sound good when it's been chopped up by the turbo impeller.
I realize Porsche is stuck between very unfriendly motoring regulations and demanding customers. I don't know what percentage of their customers are enthusiast hard core like us, but I don't see me spending 981-type prices for a F4. If I wanted an econbox, I'd buy one.
Racing is being warped to an adjunct of green PR. F1 2014 car specs being a debacle of the first order. The racing has been good, but well, the Mercedes Safety Car now sounds much better than the race cars -- something very wrong with that picture. Fuel flow meters in racing? Fuel usage specs on screen? Is this Formula 1 or the Mobil Economy Challenge?
I guess I should have archived the F1 races from the pre-KERS era, I didn't realize I'd need to re-watch them instead of new races. The part that gets missed there is not that the 2014 cars aren't loud enough, it's just the sound like crap. They don't need to be loud to sound good, e.g., the Safety Car. As it is, they sound like a electric screwdriver in a sewer pipe in the next county.
The ACO has long had strange ideas, and most recently had the table so skewed that gasoline engines couldn't really compete with the diesels. However, when the RS Spyder started beating the Audis in ALMS for outright wins, the next year the Spyder got a more restrictive air restrictor. To give you an idea, I've been reliably told that the Spyder made 700 HP on the dyno. Depending on the year, it was either restricted to 440 HP or 500 HP in race trim. That's a lot of restriction.
Jim