Silence. The Opel Corsa GSE is parked on Lake Neusiedl, the water is calm. But it didn’t come to Pachfurth in Austria for that. Helen Walter gets in, activates the ‘Active Sport Sound’ in the menu.
How does that sound?

What comes out of the speakers when accelerating and braking in the interior is neither classic engine sound nor futuristic electric humming. It’s somewhere in between – and that was exactly the idea. “We wanted a sound that fits GSE and Opel,” says Helen Walter. As a product manager, she accompanied and drove the development. Because the new Corsa GSE with its 281 hp should not only offer a dynamic and engaging. It should also sound that way.

What does Grand Sport Electric sound like?

Sporty, of course. Emotional. And like performance. But what does sporty actually sound like? And how does such an idea translate into a sound that matches the car? Walter and a team in Rüsselsheim dealt with these questions for months. In internal listening tests, different sounds were evaluated. The same question was always the focus: Which sound world suits GSE? The direction quickly became apparent – and yet the answer was not easy. The sound was allowed to be reminiscent of the motorsport past. It was supposed to sound like an electric future. An existing sound from the repertoire was out of the question. “We quickly agreed: We can’t fall back on what already exists,” says Walter. So: start from scratch. And develop it yourself.

How do you develop a sound? The answer leads to Klaus Pfleiderer and his team in Rüsselsheim. Pfleiderer is in charge of NVHI development, short for Noise, Vibration, Harshness and Integration. Put simply, the experts look closely into how noises and vibrations behave, feel and sound in the vehicle. “We also wanted to appeal to the hearing with the Corsa GSE and thus create an additional emotional level,” explains Pfleiderer. The idea now had to become a concrete sound. And for that, it’s not enough to simply find a suitable sound. What matters is what it consists of.

What a violin has to do with it

Sound designer Thomas Cazaux uses music to explain this: If a violin plays the same note as a guitar, we still immediately hear a difference. Among other things, the overtones are decisive for this. They give the sound its character. The developers followed a similar principle with the Corsa GSE. Recordings of combustion engines also served as starting material. The experts dismantled their sound character, retained selected components, removed others and added synthetic and electronic elements. Step by step, the result moved away from the classic engine sound. The result was not a digital copy of an engine. “It’s a completely new sound with familiar echoes and its own electric character,” explains Pfleiderer.

Listen. Drive. Listen again.

It was not only the acoustics experts who decided on the right sound. It was developed jointly in Rüsselsheim: colleagues from engineering, product, brand, communications and marketing, including Marketing Director Rebecca Reinermann and Marc Fetzer, Vice President Current Products, listened in. Short distances, joint listening sessions and direct exchange between the departments shaped the development process. In workshops and larger surveys, different variants were evaluated. The aim was not to decide on the personal taste of individuals, but to create a common sound that was as clear as possible.

An important tool for this is also located in Rüsselsheim: the NVHI driving simulator. The test subjects sit in front of a realistic driving situation, accelerate themselves, brake and experience directly how the sound changes. Vibrations can also be simulated. This allows many people to experience and evaluate different variants under comparable conditions. It was only when the character of the GSE sound was largely determined that it was transferred to the real vehicle. „Once integrated only minimal adjustments were necessary,“ says Pfleiderer.


Back to Pachfurth. Now it remains to be seen how the result performs on the road. Helen Walter accelerates, the Corsa speeds up – and the sound changes with it. Because the sound does not simply an acoustic accompaniment. It reacts to how the car is moved. When accelerating, it becomes more prominent and then withdraws again. In Sport mode, the experience becomes more intense. The sound is played back via six speakers in the interior.

And how is that received? Initial driving reports pretty much capture the idea behind the development. The Auto Zeitung describes the sound as „not obtrusive and coherently composed“. electrive emphasises that it does not try to imitate a combustion engine, but develops its own electric character. PistonHeads also praises the fact that the sound is present without becoming obtrusive.

The sound goes along

Those who prefer to enjoy the natural silence of the electric drive can deactivate the sound. The selected setting is also retained the next time the vehicle is started. For Klaus Pfleiderer and Helen Walter, sound is part of the overall package of the Corsa GSE: design for the eye, acceleration and chassis for the body – and the specially developed sound for the ear.

At Lake Neusiedl, there is not much left of the silence of the beginning. Helen Walter hits the accelerator, the Corsa GSE eagerly responds – and with it the sound changes. Months of listening, discussing and developing become audible. What does GSE sound like? A little like where Opel comes from. And quite clearly like where Opel wants to go.