Ford Falcon Sprint exhaust battle

It took one hearty rev of the new 345kW Ford Falcon XR8 Sprint for us to realise, yep, we're sort of wasting our time here.

In isolation its little sibling, the 325kW/576Nm XR6 Turbo Sprint, sounds fantastic, a burly and characterful straight-six growl full of turbo whistle under load - and a tasteful, and sensible, blow-off valve flutter when you roll out.

We had the chance to find out for ourselves at Tasmania's Baskerville Raceway during the cars' official launch today.

However, put them side by side for a bit of a rev and there is, sadly, no comparison. You can't argue the blokes doing the revving don't know what they were doing, either, given they're the ones who led the Sprint program. Program manager Justin Capicchiano is in the six and chief program engineer David Burn the eight.

Our pick is the bellowing XR8. But judge for yourself.