Recently, our own now-recovering Jason Torchinsky wrote a little bit about his near-death experience with very graphic medical illustrations of what happened, as well as a rather too-graphic written description of loss of control of his lower gastrointestinal system. The above image would appear to be a continuation of Torch’s story but is, in fact, not a human body part and instead an automobile component.
Starting in the late eighties, car manufacturers were all about that bass- the best way to translate that 808-generated sound into your vehicle. Bose started with the system used in the C4 Corvette, which was used almost verbatim in other General Motors luxury cars (and our 1990 Z32, which included a “center channel” below the head unit). The Bass Wars was officially on, with JBL getting into the mix with systems like the one in my crappy 200,000 mile Town Car which actually sounded like some dude in the trunk with a baseball bat against the rear seat back. Bose could not sit on their laurels.
For home use, Bose had developed something called the Acoustic Wave “Bass Cannon” which sounds at first like something designed to shoot fish great distances but is in fact a long tube that Bose discovered would be the best way to deliver maximum ground pounding.
This is a cool idea, but somehow a giant tube like that was not going to work in a car, especially a small car like the FD Mazda RX-7 that Bose was tasked with making a sound system for in the early nineties.
The solution Bose came up with was the same as how the human body deals with twenty-something feet of small intestines and five feet of large intestine; a twisted, convoluted tubing shape that snaked around the inside edge of the RX-7’s cargo space. The shape created the equivalent length of the bass cannon, though it did still take up a lot of trunk space and, jeez, just look at it.
In fact, it looked EXACTLY like a human colon if we’re being honest.
There are holes in the rear cargo cover when this Loch Ness monster pokes its heads to give you bass mechanics the thump you need. Googly eyes would look good mounted on the ends.
Honestly, most low frequency fans took a simpler approach and just mounted foot-and-a-half diameter Cerwin Vega subs into fiberboard boxes where the rear seats would be on foreign market models and let that do the trick. That’s what I would have done back in the day- wouldn’t you?
Sorry, I couldn’t catch your answer; I’ve been having problems with my hearing recently. I’n not sure what’s caused this.
I sold these briefly in the early 90s.
The Bose system only was available in the Touring model – and yes, it was a bit ridiculous.
I believe Mercedes-Benz did a clever job w/ the R231 SL – where they used the cavities in the forward frame rails as bass enclosures. Didn’t they call it “Magic Bass” or something like that?
Along those lines, the current BMW M4 uses the rocker panel cavities for the floor mounted subwoofers.
that explains why my farts sound so deep
Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “fart cannon”