SOUND OF POWER!
Jamie treats the RS to a mountune axle-back exhaust upgrade.. .and he loves it!
Last month the RS had its first ever oil change, and with fresh fluids and an updated PCM it was ready for action once again. And my first port of call was legendary Ford tuners, mountune. Back at the end of last summer I was lucky enough to test drive their M380 demo car – I loved the car so much that I immediately had the M380 upgrade fitted to my RS! But one other thing that I loved about that demo car was the axle-back exhaust upgrade it sported. Ever since I’ve wanted one for my car, and now I’ve got one!
On start up it immediately sounds angry – like you’ve just punched a sleeping bear in the face! It growls and sneers, and sounds bloody aggressive! Perfect for an RS then!
Even in Normal mode it’s more aggressive with the axle-back fitted, giving a nice bark when you blip the throttle and more of those infamous pops and snaps on lift-off too.
But flick the RS into Sport mode and the car is transformed – especially with the revised ‘M380 + exhaust’ calibration installed!
Immediately the growl at tickover intensifies! Now it sounds like that bear you punched in the face has just caught you sleeping with his missus too! Give the throttle a blip and the whole thing crackles and bangs like a tuned fast Ford should!
Out on the road the driving experience completely changes – you can’t help but try and provoke the loudest pops and bangs possible. If you’ve driven the standard car and think that’s good in Sport mode, you need to try one with the axle-back fitted; it gives the RS a whole other dimension!
But popping and banging, and roaring and barking are all very well on a Sunday B-road blast, but they’re not quite so welcome on a Monday morning commute. Watching school children (and their parents!) duck because they think they’ve just heard a shotgun being fired as you drive past isn’t really going to win you any favours with the locals. Time and place an’ all that...
And, for me, that’s the best thing about mountune’s axle-back upgrade; it can make the car sound like a ripsnorting, aggressive, monster when I want it to, but when I drop it back into Normal mode and plod along in everyday traffic the car behaves like a sensible OE model.
Call me greedy, but I want to be able to use my £30k car as much as possible, and I don’t want a stupidly loud exhaust system that’s embarrassing to use around town, scares pedestrians, or generally makes me look a bit of a knob. And thanks to some clever engineering by the boffins at mountune, the axle-back means the car does what I want, when I want.
Furthermore it doesn’t drone! At all. Not ever. Mountune say they have spent a lot of time and cash developing a system that doesn’t drone or boom at motorway speeds, and whatever they have done has worked! You can sit at steady cruising speeds and have a conversation with the passengers without even raising your voice. In the past I’ve had cars
with exhausts so unbearable they are practically unusable on anything other than a short sprint to the shops, but the axle-back is really refined. It’s got a nice distant grumble to let you know you’re driving an RS, but it also means you can use the car in comfort for long distance cruising just as much as you can chuck it around a race track.
In case you can’t tell already, I absolutely love what mountune’s axleback exhaust has done for my RS. It really is a case of having your cake and eating it!
Yes, some may say that at £1050 it’s expensive, but trust me it’s worth every penny! It retains the original center-section of the exhaust, along with those complicated OE pyramidflats, so you have no fears over any clearance issues - ideal for lowered cars like mine.
And don’t forget that it’s the only exhaust that doesn’t affect the base warranty, and it comes complete with a new valve and motor assembly too!
Plus if, like me, you find it difficult parting with large sums of cash, you can take advantage of mountune’s finance options too. It doesn’t matter how you pay for it, just make sure you get one on your RS as I guarantee you’ll love it as much as I do!