The quietest cars - a great listing
 

I've been shopping for a new car and wanted to confirm my observations of what I drove vs my GS350.

The one thing I love about Lexus is the quietness when cruising. I drove an Audi A8 which I thought was about as quiet and a Jaguar XF which I thought was noisier.

This link turned out to be a great resource to both confirm what I found and give me some options I hadn't thought of:

http://sniperslaststand.blogspot.com...etest-car.html

There is a further link to demonstrate the differences a decibel or 3 decibels can make. 3 decibels is perceived as a doubling of noise level, so it's a big deal when leaving a Lexus.

The real surprising thing for me was how many BMW's are quieter than both the GS350 and the LS460.

Also, found it interesting that the V6 Genesis is quieter than the GS350.

Lastly, Lexus overall seem to be the quietest at idle, and at full throttle, but not at 70mph. This suggests to me that the engines are put together the best but that the aerodynamics / underbody soundproofing is not as good as it could be.

It uses Edmunds to compare the data... i have done that before.

Only thing i would say is that they should also use WOT readings as well, since they only use 70 mph cruise.

From the link:

Format is: the rank, the car and noise level in decibels
at 70 mph (~112,5 km/h)
at full throttle
when idling

they ranked the cars by cruise db level... i think it should be combination of all 3, as all 3 influence your senses.

I think the ranking is meaningful. Most of the time you are cruising, not @ WOT or @ Idle

The most important decibel-figures, as I see it, are for engine/exhaust-noise on hard acceleration and for tire/road noise on coarse pavement. That is when most cars are at their noisiest.

BTW, though I don't actually measure the decibels of cars I review, to my ears, among modern cars, the Lexus LS460 would get the top award. I haven't sampled the latest Mercedes S-Class, but past ones also rank way up there.

my experience tells me otherwise.

i think a real test is to check out those cars after 1 year of ownership and then compare. rattling is definitely a big problem for BMW.

Highly subjective especially splitting hairs amongst the quietest cars. Even instrumented testing has limitations when converting to human hearing perception.

I've found newer BMWs, Audis, Benz's, Jags, Lexus to be pretty damn quiet with the radio off.

I'm assuming that, with hybrids, they take the measurements with the gas engine running. Running on electrics alone, of course, eliminates most of the drivetrain noise.

They must b/c a Lexus hybrid at idle has 50% less NVH than a conventional car. Its really a relaxing and quiet place to be in a fast paced hectic world. :)

My mom's new GX is pretty quiet. Even my SC300 is pretty quiet with the stock exhaust.

tires are a confounding factor.

crappy tires will make your 70mph cruise noisy

my LS is like a tomb. I can imagine that most luxury cars these days are the same

It's a little dated, but interesting nonetheless. Supposedly the new Chrysler 300 is quieter than the the Mulsanne (or was it Flying Spur?).