The quality of vehicle sound is a multidimensional perceptual property. The aim of this study is to investigate the perceptual space of instationary vehicle exterior sounds regarding their overall quality, sportiness and annoyance. The driving conditions, which were investigated in this study, are "engine start-idle" and "accelerated pass-by". In the first part of this study, a similarity investigation was conducted. The result of the similarity investigation is the distance of the vehicle exterior sounds to each other. This distance is based on the complex relationship of perceptual properties and provides a broad overview on the perceptual space of the vehicle exterior sounds. In the next part, a semantic differential (SD) investigation was conducted. The SD list consists of 36 attributes. These attributes describe partly the signal characteristics and partly the emotional aspects. To investigate the relationship of the attributes and their role on the overall quality, the sportiness and the comfort, a factor analysis was conducted. Finally, the results obtained in the similarity and semantic differential investigations were compared.