Men sometimes buy luxury cars partly based on the response from women. Now here comes the science to back up that behavior. British psychologist, David Moxon has performed a study for auto insurer Hiscox which says that the revving of a luxury car engine is sexually arousing to women. His research involved having 40 adults listen to recordings from Maserati, Lamborghini and Ferrari engines using the sound of a Volkswagen Polo for contrast. His team used saliva samples to measure the level of testosterone before and after listening to each car.

Moxon found that all the women had a significant increase in testosterone levels after listening to the Maserati engine but only half of the men marked an increase. By contrast the Volkswagen Polo led to a decrease in testosterone for some in the study. So maybe instead of putting on soft music when you want to get romantic you might want to try the throaty rumble of a Porsche instead.