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Comment by brokenodo | Hacker News Reader

I love cars and driving them. But the modded Corolla/Civic/Accord/Camry (why) people have always driven me crazy because their mods often seem directed to inflicting their cars on everyone else, with loud exhaust, subwoofers, and (subjectively) garish cosmetics, rather than things that make it actually good to drive.

I recognize this is judgmental and it's unhealthy to always be annoyed at these people on the road, so I clicked the article looking for some empathetic understanding - and I really got it, UNTIL he told me about his "fire-breathing" exhaust and subwoofer. So it is about subjecting OTHER people to his car.

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I don't mind cosmetics, but noise is something some places fortunately started regulating and I hope it becomes more common:

https://nltimes.nl/2026/05/28/rotterdam-deploys-first-noise-...

I'm hearing someone gunning it through a neighboring road as I type this comment and I will be hearing such noise all night, because some people just can't help but make noise.

The other day I even saw a guy in a car with a modified exhaust and driver side window rolled down - apparently so that he would better hear the noise he's making. Considering the volume that had to have a negative effect on his hearing.

I don't understand and I will not understand.

I hope that becomes more common so long as privacy is respected. Fortunately my neighborhood is fairly quiet.

I don't understand either, but I don't have a problem with people doing what they want. If municipalities can regulate speed limits for safety and other reasons they should be able to.

So if you want to be loud live out in the country where there is space.

Probably more likely to get harassed in the country for it because the cops gotta fish harder for their extortion money/pay.

Ive been pulled over multiple times with brand new stock exhaust on a stock vehicle cruising at 55 because the body looked old and rusted and the cops were looking for any plausable excuse. With a real excuse they could throw tickets at you when they get frusterated with lack of other possible charges.

>Probably more likely to get harassed in the country for it because the cops gotta fish harder for their extortion money/pay.

Yes and no. Rich places that can trivially afford to over-staff their PD's compared to the amount of "real crime" to go around are some of the worst when it comes to baseless fishing.

There is certainly not a rich place, it is dirt poor. Which is why the people make easy targets, they don't have money to throw around for lawyers.

Unfortunately certain choices make you fit a certain profile.

Case in point: police in my region started cracking down on street racing. Original intention was to deal the obvious danger and noise pollution, but it so happened that after each round of checks they would find at least one DUI, suspended license or even a case of drug possession. Naturally they continued, as street racing is somewhat difficult to prove, but the other mentioned offences are much less ambiguous.

Unsurprisingly people who disregard the law don't just settle on a narrow range of offences.

When was the last time you saw a cop actually stop a crime? Not respond to one, but prevent a crime? Even their responses to "real crime" are half-hearted in almost every state I've lived in. Many act like I'm imposing on them.

I had a guitar stolen out of my car in the late 90's. It was hot pink, and I was pretty sure that the thief would try to pawn it. So when I spoke with the cop who showed up, I mentioned about checking pawn shops etc. He said "Sounds like a good idea. If you find anything, let us know..."

Completely useless choads...

I’m having trouble imagining the privacy concern. If someone’s vehicle is topping 90db then it’s hard to argue what they really want is privacy, and even the most invasive monitoring method I can think of (widespread mics) could be nerfed by requiring hardware that only responds at db threshholds well above conversation.

>driver side window rolled down - apparently so that he would better hear the noise he's making

Why would you think that was the case?

I’m at the point where I don’t just want ticketing and other enforcement on this front, I want yanked licenses for this after a warning, and I might even want it legal to shoot vehicles guilty of noise violations and their drivers with paintballs to mark them for further enforcement and shame.

Smoking is the atmospheric equivalent of peeing in the pool; noise pollution is something between that and opting everyone into your dumb M80 party. It’s antisocial, it causes health problems on top of discomfort, and it should stop.

Sure, but as long as they're allowed to paintball you and sick draconian enforcement on you for whatever trivial things you do they deem to be slights against society.

Like FFS, it's just fucking noise. It's a small minority of people. Can we just ignore them? There's so much bigger problems. Most people grow out of it after one car like that.

"Like FFS, it's just fucking noise"

Okay, let me blast 110dB into your ears and you tell me how the fuck you like it.

110dB once a week isn't really a big deal. I don't really care if someone rips it down the highway assuming they aren't being completely reckless.

Its not "just noise" when its preventing people from actually sleeping.

I don't think you'd like it if people played deafeningly loud noises outside your bedroom window at all hours of the night every night forever.

I live just uphill of a state highway junction so I get to hear everything accelerating leaving that intersection.

It's really not bad. You don't even notice it after awhile unless it's something that sounds funny like a semi trailer with an out of round tire or like a cluster of motorcyles or a mazda rotary or a nat-gas powered heavy truck.

What you mean is "it's really not bad for me".

Noise pollution is horrible. It is jarring and causes stress (health issues), and poor sleep (health issues).

This isn't just a vague immaterial thing, this is a genuine negative impact on people's health and by extension life expectation. If people could "just ignore it", obviously they would, right? Some of us can't. Luckily I moved away from most noise and live in a quiet area now, but nothing is stopping some arsehole with a modified exhaust driving down my road every night. It could start happening at any point. At which point, I'd want laws to stop it happening.

May you be cursed with chaotic noise til the end of your days

> It's a small minority of people

So are serial killers. A small minority of people can affect the lives and health of a lot more. A handful of people roaring through a neighborhood at night like this can mean nobody ever gets a proper night's sleep.

If someone plays with a laser in your eye, being told "it's just light, it's one guy, can you just ignore him, he'll grow out of it", won't be a consolation. You'll want him stopped.

> Most people grow out of it after one car like that.

Someone else grows into it.

If we could ignore them, this thread would not exist.

and I support extra legal measures against these people. They do it for the attention and they deserve the attention they will have coming to them.

In Seattle they had a guy in Belltown being a nuisance with a loud charger at all hours of the night in an urban setting. They knew who he was and he lived with his mom (lol). I never understood why the community didn’t deal with it when the police would not. Lack of enforcement is what leads to vigilantism.

>I never understood why the community didn’t deal with it when the police would not.

Because if you are the one who actually has to do the violence rather than outsourcing it to the state it becomes clear this isn't a subject worth that violence.

Put yourself in the shoes of the guy who has to do the pistol whipping. Unless you've got a badge and a state paycheck and can just blindly live with your actions as "it's muh job" and know that just about everyone will agree it's just not worth it.

Hence why only the state ever applies violence over such subjects.

I think it’s cameras. I used to know people who took these matters into their own hands with baseball bats to the offending vehicle at 3 in the morning. But that was many years ago where if there were any witnesses they’d be glad some blue collar kind of guy got fed up with the noise making nuisance of a car.

When you say enforcement isn't worth it, you end up letting the most inconsiderate people with some of the worst decision making set the tone for society.

It's also pretty likely that the state violence will be a threat rather than a literal pistol whipping. Harder for the vigilante to make that work.

>you end up letting the most inconsiderate people with some of the worst decision making set the tone for society.

How's that different than letting complainers send state violence enforce stuff that's not a problem worth thinking about to most people?

"that's not a problem worth thinking about to most people?"

Begs the question.

If I called the county every time someone drove past my house with a loud modded exhaust it would consume my days and nights. The loud exhaust people are a scourge and I would love an easy way to get them to stop.

Civics are legos with extensive aftermarket support. Type-Rs are designed to be tracked (IIRC fastest FWD in NA). People often mod these to track better, and in JPN obviously mod them to drive them illegally on highways.

Civics, or more specifically the older naturally aspirated engines from Honda as a whole (including the F20C1 found in the S2000 AP1) are high-RPM engines, often revving to 8500-9000 RPM, which is going to be loud no matter what you do.

No, not all mods are designed to inflict something on someone else. Popular FL5 mods are designed around engine/oil cooling, brake capacity (prevent fading), and camber. Yes, you can get nuts with a racing-only, non-CARB DP or a non-valved exhaust, but that's a personal choice. Not every FL5 owner follows that ethos. But you can also go with a CARB-compliant DP, valved exhaust (OE is valved, many aftermarkets use valved exhausts), and even if you do a mid-pipe resonator delete, it's no louder than it's sister car, the Acura DE5, which doesn't even come with a mid-pipe resonator from the factory.

And yes, a modded FL5 is a ton more fun to drive than a non-modded one due to a single, hidden mod - replacing the suspension controller with one from a DE5 or from DSC makes the ride much smoother. Honda doesn't get everything 'right' (but they do get engines down pat).

Ofc, you do have fire-breathing 1000hp S2000s out there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw2tYyBbZ-Q

I don't think anyone objects to modding your street legal car to go 0-100 in 3 seconds as long as you're not interrupting every conversation for a quarter mile in any direction wherever you drive. But everywhere I go, no matter what I'm doing, someone's exhaust mod is there to make sure I can't finish my sentences or listen to my son, and I'm sick of it.

Some cars, usually older pre-regulation, are just naturally that loud.

And some people are absolute assholes - https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/belltown-he...

Should have gotten life.

I mean, I object to cars with unreasonable acceleration on the roads.

I'm looking at you, Tesla Plaid; a ten second car was a plot point in The Fast and the Furious, so this feels like yet another "we have created the Torment Nexus".

Many of the mods make the car worse in everyday environments, outside of a pristine track.

After I got into my friend's modded-out car, we had to slow to walking speeds to exit the parking lot because it would bottom out on the curb cut. The same happens with speed bumps. Large rims get damaged on potholes that a normal tire and rim combo would just shrug off.

Add a few years to your life and you don't want to crawl and duck into a low car anymore. Stiff suspensions are hard on the back and joints.

Some people actually do track their cars, though.

It’s a very small percentage of these vehicles though.

yeah, majority of people just want to have something that is capable of doing cool stuff, but can't really commit to actually doing it. it's like how so many buy and tune WRXs, but don't actually take it to gravel roads.

TBH most of the mods that really make people point and laugh won't fare very well on a track or rally stage either.

20-inch wheels aren't capable of cool stuff. It's all peacocking.

wdym, what else am I going to use to crush my enemies /s

> 20-inch wheels aren't capable of cool stuff. It's all peacocking.

You should let Porsche and Chevy know that all the lap records they set with the GT3 RS and ZR1 could be even faster with some proper wheels ;)

> it's like how so many buy and tune WRXs, but don't actually take it to gravel roads.

For good reason, they're not built for it. A relatively stock WRX is going to be destroyed after a few outings of hard driving on rough terrain[1]. The WRC winning Subarus[2] were fully built racecars from top to bottom and share only styling with the ones sold at dealerships. They're very fun and capable on solid pavement for a cheap car, but the rally pedigree is all marketing.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT-o8vuhRok

[2] https://cars.bonhams.com/auction/27996/lot/87/1999-subaru-im...

I mean yeah, stock is one thing, but when WRX owners build it out, it's usually slammed and sometimes embarrassing levels of negative camber. Rally builds are rare, even though the AWD and (for the current gen WRX) the cladding would suit it.

Fashion that makes things impractical is often quite sticky.

When the first people drove mountain bikes in the city I thought it was fad that would quickly go away but here we are. Ok, they were an improvement over the previous fad of racing bikes, but neither of them is as practical in the city as they could be.

The potholes in the city of Berkeley make me glad I have a hybrid bike.

Similar with lifted trucks.

Lifts are bad for driveshafts, suspension, tires, etc

Well there's right ways to do them, where you replace all the weak components with properly strengthened components, and geometry fixing components, and then there's the wrong way to do them, which is what 99% of people do, where they just do a cheap lift, without upgrading the other components, and eventually it fails.

Probably the primary reason why vehicles like Jeeps get a bad reputation - they're incredibly commonly modded, and incredibly horribly/improperly modded, and the vehicle gets the blame when the mods fail, rather than the horrible things the owner did to them.

Average quality and reliability ratings even on new, unmodified Jeeps are abysmal. I understand why some consumers like them for style and off-road capability but overall it's a trash brand.

I see this all the time where I live. People doing their grocery shopping in their super stanced out civic, having to find a route around the speed bumps because they literally can't go over them without high centering.

Yeah, it looks sick. But it's completely impractical for daily driving, and quite frankly you are putting both yourself and others at risk the moment you blow a tire going 80 on the freeway and lose control of your car.

> it looks sick

Personally I'll take a sedan or wagon with ample ground clearance any day: https://images.classic.com/vehicles/559a40ae72662e1ac71d2286...

>I see this all the time where I live. People doing their grocery shopping in their super stanced out civic, having to find a route around the speed bumps because they literally can't go over them without high centering.

I hate that less than the upper middle class types that slow their $50k Highlander/Pilot/Range Rover a crawl to drive over them.

Why would you blow a tire? What are you on about? It's dangerous to blow a tire in any car.

But it's fun to mod the car and you get to drive around in an art project. My dad did basically the same thing during the 1950's and 60's hot rod culture. This is more or less what his car looked like:

https://www.hotrod.com/features/1932-ford-roadster-the-golde...

He never had a lot of money to spend on it but he did have access to car parts and was a gifted mechanic. One of my favorite memories was going out for a ride in that thing in the summer with him and I would ask him to go faster and he would wind it up to about 120 mph for a few miles and it was so exciting (and, in retrospect, a bad idea). He would tell me he had to do that occasionally to get the carbon out. :)

The author here didn’t even recount doing any work on his car or demonstrate any real knowledge of basic mechanics. Just talks about the high-end shops that did the work.

He did a great job painting himself as completely self-absorbed and lacking in personality that he’s making up with consooming. Down to the whining and performative identitarian victimization. Like if you just enjoy cars and love your Vietnamese-American hyphen culture awesome do that. But this whole article reeks of LOOK AT ME.

That's a pretty harsh take.

"art project" <-- eyes rolling collectively

I mean mods are always about tradeoffs. You're generally not smarter than the team of engineers that designed it, but you probably do have different goals, that's where the opportunity to improve an aspect of the car comes in.

I think it should be done with a clear understanding of what you're giving up, but some people don't want to put practicality first and that's okay.

Nothing judgemental or unhealthy about it. It's perfectly normal to be annoyed by such nuisances. The existence of these people is one of many factors that make driving literal hell on earth.

Driving isn't so bad, the bad part is being outside a car while these things buzz by. Like there are restaurants with outdoor patios I entirely avoid because I want to hear others at the table instead of farting Hondas.

At one point my wife's 1995 Civic had a busted exhaust pipe ahead of the muffler and was loud as hell. She reported receiving compliments from a few different Civic enthusiasts, much to her confusion.

She just wanted me to fix the broken pipe.

In our family we use the expression "farting Honda" (or Toyota, Subaru, whatever) when we hear these kinds of cars on the road.

The exhaust on my old Range Rover split between the catastrophic converters and the first silencer, leaving it completely open.

The novelty of it sounding like the start of Jerry Was A Racecar Driver hadn't entirely worn off before I welded it up, I guess, but I'm not about to go around attracting attention to myself.

Not when I could see it making plate glass shop windows vibrate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkE4-zsqYwo

catastrophic converter is such a hilarious autocorrect.

It's not an autocorrect. These things are terrible.

If you have a better way to get rid of all those pollutants, I'm sure we'd all love to hear about it.

Well, if you insist on running them on petrol, just having a lambda sensor and closed-loop mixture control breaks the back of it.

However, if you run them on propane instead of petrol - like they do for forklifts and Zambonis, where you have to run the engines indoors without people dying - you just get carbon dioxide and water vapour out. You don't need a catalytic converter and indeed if you have one it can make the pollution slightly worse by generating nitrogen oxides.

Imagine how clean our cities could have been if we'd done this 20 years ago, instead of selling people debt to buy "Cleaner Greener Diesels".

They're still emitting CO2, but a little less of it, and from fuel that would otherwise go up in smoke at the refinery flare stack - unless you want to stop making plastics and fertilisers.

fart cannons galore where I live, all hours of night and day. only option is to learn to live with em

my subaru is obnoxious in looks only, I want the exhaust to be normal, lol

someone stole the catalytic converter from my Honda CRV a few years ago by basically cutting off the entire exhaust system. It made for a very loud drive until we got it fixed hah.

It's shocking how loud even small ICE engines are. I drove a Geo Metro back in the 90s, with it's tiny little 1.0L motor (with 45 and 1/2 angry little horses-- and the half horse is the angriest of them all) and between the exhaust resonator and muffler rusting out I got to hear how loud a little motor is. Shockingly loud.

Think about how much louder a gas mower is than a car. They're insane!

I also dislike loud cars, but I've come to accept that the motivation of loud car owners is probably to gain kudos from other loud car lovers, rather than to inflict pain on us normies. One time I remember being on my bicycle and a kid car revved past me and another cyclist. In my head I though "what an asshole" but the cyclist next to me shouted "Sick!!!" I'm not really defending the loud noise, but I think it's useful to shift perspective a bit and understand it is probably not an act of intentional violence (though it may be unintentional violence).

I don’t see how your “shift” makes it any better. Did you really think people did exhaust mods purely to torment everyone around them? The noise and the its effect on listeners is the entire point. The fact that it’s primarily to gain kudos from “other loud car lovers” and especially attention from vapid women doesn’t alter the fact that they know and more likely relish if not most charitably are completely indifferent to the effect on everyone else. Which is fundamentally bad character when you’re revving these around populated areas.

After all any “loud car lover” is also either annoyed when their sleep is interrupted or they can’t hear themselves think for hours on end, or they have the IQ of a box of rocks. They want to hear loud revving only when it is convenient and enjoyable to them. So you can choose either complete self-centeredness and hypocrisy at that (likely) or being borderline too dumb to operate a vehicle.

> Did you really think people did exhaust mods purely to torment everyone around them?

I didn't, but the OP wrote:

> So it is about subjecting OTHER people to his car

So my comment was in response to that. I don't think people should ignore the suffering they cause for others, but to me it's different if the motivation is to cause pain vs bringing joy to like-minded people.

Right! They're not actively malicious, they just don't care about other people.

Lol I guess. I think there's a massive chasm between being ignorant of your effect on someone else and actively inflicting pain, but I'm sure I won't convince you that this is a meaningful difference if you don't already believe it. I think you could argue that tons of modern human activities cause negative experiences for other people, I don't think that means the people doing those things are terrible people. Something as simple as watering a lawn could be construed as "not caring about other people" due to failure to conserve public resources, but I don't get a lot of person benefit from cursing every person with a green lawn in the summer.

It's possible that nobody has ever complained to them about the noise. It's possible that they have never been annoyed at loud noises. Anything's possible.

Either it's intentional and malicious, or it's unintentional and extremely inconsiderate. Either way, death penalty.

It's still incredibly immature and selfish, intentional or not.

I admire your empathy, though.

No sure I see that any different than the typical American behemoth truck/SUV blocking all lines of sight to everything other than a 12 wheeler. And to top it off, they can't take a corner and so they all seem to slam their brakes and cause a traffic jam at any interesting corner.

All to transport one person by themselves from home to office and back.

They can't park for shit either, so you lose spots in a parking lot and have to wait forever while they block the aisle backing out.

Here in Europe, fat American-style SUVs are still somewhat rare, especially outside cities (!). People still can't corner worth shit in their "regular" sedans. And I say this as a pretty chill motorbike rider.

I've lost count of the number of Golf GTIs and similar behind which I have to wait around when riding on roads that aren't perfectly straight. And these cars should have better cornering ability than my fat bike. I know my dad's Corolla does.

I used to drive a GTI, (it was stolen from me…) - you can absolutely fling it into a corner and come out unscathed. I never put it on a track and I don’t think it would do great without adjustment but on road legal speeds there no reason it should need the driver to be “tender”

Counterpoint: I know my car can brake and turn much harder than I do (it's not a sports car by any mean, but that's beyond the point).

I'd rather not change my tires and brake pads all the time though, and keep some margin for whatever unexpected stuff is hiding behind the corner. Also I don't like having to stop because everyone in the car got motion sickness.

I'm not saying they should drive like a rally. I most certainly don't. Just don't slow down to a snail's pace for no reason. Or if you insist on doing that for whatever reason, let other people pass you if you can see that visibility is low.

Every car can brake, turn and accelerate much harder than any of us will even think to do especially turning and braking. But you pinpointed why we must not attempt to reach for the limit, not for us but for the others. And anyway a normal car won't lay long if driven like a racing car. Every single component is not designed for that.

The usual computer analogy /s You don't run a LLM on a Core Duo 2, but of course https://yeokhengmeng.com/2025/04/llama2-llm-on-dos/

Race cars component are designed for higher loads, but they aren't designed to last either. Running cost per mileage of race cars is super high actually because of all the consumables to be replaced and stuff that needs to be serviced on a regular basis.

I have a sports car and a Model Y. Whenever I go on a twisty mountain road, without fail, if I will encounter what you said. It does not matter which of the two cars I drive! What's worse is that this happens even in roads where the speed limit is 35 mph and those people may drive 25 mph or even 15 mph! (See the road passing through Cambria in California. It's an epic drivers' road, and yet...)

For some reason people seem to fail to understand that the speed limit is not supposed to be a target to reach.

For the love of God speed up

There are vehicles that cannot and are allowed on the same roads.

It’s more like the lower end of acceptable speed to drive.

Sometimes I wonder whether going excessively slow around corners is a symptom of people pushing their steering wheel from the side opposite the direction of the curve instead of pulling it from the same side into the curve. Just a hunch, but doing the latter usually feels like I have more control.

I don't know about that. But what I usually observe is that many people tend to veer off in the next lane in the direction of the turn (even if it's a lane for traffic going the opposite way!) if there is one. But if there isn't (right turn, they're in the rightmost lane), they'll tend to leave quite a lot of space between the car and the shoulder.

So I'd say these people have a hard time figuring out the space on the road their car takes. I can only imagine this worsens with larger cars and less visibility.

Oddly enough I recently accepted an old beat up, but gigantic utility truck from the 90s that I'd never have purchased, and while it's fun to drive, it's also absurd to try and park it anywhere. Even box trucks are comparatively easy to figure out. When it dies, I'm sure as hell not going buy another one, but until then I'll enjoy not knowing how close I am to anything.

Unfortunately we’ve got one of these people across the street. He is training to be an electrician and starts his modded Toyota apparently with an amplified kazoo welded into the muffler at 4:15am every weekday. Shakes the entire house like a B-17 bomber.

I promise you it is not limited to the Camry/Corolla/Civic community, it's just that those cars are very commonplace so its more obvious. I had a full track build BRZ that looked nearly stock from the outside other than the wheels and hood vents, and I loved that car and still miss it. Even in the Miata and BRZ/86 communities where these are designed as cheap, trackable sports cars, most of the community is more focused on cosmetics and adding cheap plastic and chinesium parts to their cars than doing anything that improves driving dynamics.

As a counterpoint for practical (i.e., performance) mods being the only mods that matter... I have a F82 which has a few carbon fiber parts to make it stand out a bit. I really don't think I need more performance than what it has to offer, so making it look nicer seems like e a good idea (at least it won't look identical to all other F82s).

Now, would I do that to a Camry? No freakin way.

I don't think there's anything wrong with doing purely cosmetic modifications if those modifications don't also make the car worse. The challenge is many folks in the community do cosmetic modifications that actually reduce performance.

I read "midlife crisis" as "old guy trying to impress much younger girls" and then a cheap-ish car modded to be fast, furious, and obnoxiously loud seems like it might just work. Plus it's probably an amazing toy that can also be enjoyed solo.

And as long as there's enough attractive women who are impressed by loud cars, there will be guys with loud cars. I also dislike loud cars. But I'm at a loss as to how one would fix the root cause. Pull requests welcome ;)

And, yes, I share your impression. That car is about him trying to enforce attention by subjecting other people to his car.

Is this the kind of pull request you were looking for? https://youtube.com/shorts/QiOGH6JtL5E

Unfortunately yes. Many of the people driving tuner cars don't give a shit about cars and are merely mad that no one pays attention to them. There's an antisocial loser on my street, a ~50yo guy in a modded Infinity. The exhaust is so loud it shakes windows and I can't talk on the phone or hear my own music inside my house when it's nearby. And it's a shit car. He's destroyed it. It barely even drives. He gets tons of parking tickets because it's broken and he can't move it for months at a time, but he still goes outside and sits in it and revs the engine for sometimes 20-30 minutes at a time. When he "works on it", he lays on his back in the middle of the street, blocking traffic, for hours at a time. When he actually gets it working, he drives slowly around the block a few times, revving the engine again loud enough to annoy the entire neighborhood. All of my neighbors have reported him to the police, but they won't do anything. Whenever neighbors try to talk to him, he immediately starts screaming and waving his arms and approaching them until they back away. He's an antisocial loser.

Hard to meet a modder that isn't a loser like this.

I promise you, there are many many many people who modify their cars and do not act like assholes. The thing is, you probably don't notice them because they aren't focused on getting attention.

So much of American car/motorcycle culture seems to be about that nowadays. And it's not limited to the Japanese mod scene, either.

Loud exhausts everywhere - pickups, domestic V6/V8's, motorcycles.

Super-bright headlights/aux lights improperly mounted or operated, blinding you at night.

Stereos you can almost feel before you hear them.

All these guys (and let's face it, it's 90% guys doing the irritating stuff) are being sold a dream by the mod manufacturers that if they just install this $1500 catback or this $1000 sub they will finally get the respect they deserve.

They get online forum/Facebook/Insta/TikTok validation but very few people around them are impressed with their choices.

I mainly hate how people are being taken for a ride (pardon the pun) by marketers and putting money into things that aren't really going to improve their car-driving experience.

It's not even automobiles. The entire concept of American masculinity is about inflicting yourself on as many other people as you can. The more insufferable you are, the more "manly" you are.

Or maybe it's an attention thing. Like a dog chewing your new shoes for attention, these people feel insecure when they aren't the center of attention, and making everyone around you mad and annoyed is still better than no attention at all.

Counter point - driving down the beach in a convertible with good tunes blasting and the sea breeze in your hair is fun.

Like yeah it sucks for everyone listening, but if every other car is blasting tunes it isn't out of place. Some beach drives are known for this, right place at the right time.

When I visited Floria Keys I sure as shit rented a convertible and played bass thumping EDM as I drove over the ocean. Hell I think I may have even been wearing Ray-Bans.

Don't do that shit in a family neighborhood at 4am, but I never objected to people peeling out of the Microsoft parking garage in their lolwtf over priced garage princess sports cars. Bailing at 4pm with your coworkers to go hit up the bar is a perfect time to let loose.

Granted I don't have hair anymore but I've never driven in a convertible and felt a "breeze". Anything past 30 mph is...exactly what it is, like sticking your head out the window while driving.

> Counter point - driving down the beach in a convertible with good tunes blasting and the sea breeze in your hair is fun.

The annoying thing now is the guys with the full dresser bikes or Polaris Slingshots that have 2500W stereos installed.

You can be all the way down by the water and hear their music clear as day, as they are idling through traffic on the A1A

> The entire concept of American masculinity is about inflicting yourself on as many other people as you can.

Haha, what?

You're describing a mindset and behavior that is indeed more prevalent than it should be or used to be, but it's got nothing to do with the "concept of American masculinity"

Maybe I'm just oversensitized today, but this is the third thread I've seen in the past hour where someone brings up gender in a conversation for no good reason. As if there aren't women who are inconsiderate assholes, nor men who are kind and compassionate.

We're talking about hot-rod culture here, which has been explicity coupled with projections of notional masculinity from its inception.

Of course there are, but women tend to be inconsiderate assholes in different ways. While a population of 300 million means you could probably find plenty of counterexamples, obnoxiously loud cars and motorcycles are overwhelmingly driven by men. This isn't because men are worse than women, it's because our current culture directs antisocial men to loud vehicles, and antisocial women to other things.

Yea, it's not just masculinity, although I'm sure if you tallied up the car modders, one gender is going to be disproportionately represented.

The USA population in general has swung really, REALLY far into the "I'm going to grief others, and you can't tell me what to do!" attitude. It's much worse now than probably any time in my life. So many people out there just wake up every day looking for ways to inflict themselves on the public, act loud, aggressive and tough, and in general be "antisocial and proud of it."

> The more insufferable you are, the more "manly" you are.

That's just the usual compensation. Real heavy hitters are actually eerily quiet. They don't have anything to prove. It's the insecure who constantly engage in overt displays.

> Real heavy hitters are actually eerily quiet. They don't have anything to prove.

I've had the rare privilege to meet former SOF soldiers from a couple different nations, and working US cowboys, ranchers and farmers. While I know there are exceptions, in my personal anecdotal experience, to a man they were all quiet in the stoic sense. Nothing to prove, indeed.

>The entire concept of American masculinity is about inflicting yourself on as many other people as you can. The more insufferable you are, the more "manly" you are.

By that metric obnoxious whiny complainers who want the government to force their preferences on all of society are far more manly than someone rolling coal or whatever.

Edit: Maybe that was your point.

Don't forget the pickups "rolling coal".

Anecdotally, this seems to be going out of style, I have not seen anyone legitimately roll coal in several years. Could just be my area, of course, but we did have some coal rollers in the past.

The EPA cracked down on one of the big shops a few years ago, I believe. Probably scared off other shops from performing the mods.

> they will finally get the respect they deserve.

I believe this is a big part of it. With the rise of corporations and media, we have seen a loss of any sort of public commons. A consequence of that is that I think many people here in the US don't feel like they are part of a community. They don't feel seen by any sort of meaningful tribe, outside of their job, which is transactional and subject to the whims of corporate overlords.

So much pathological behavior in society today makes sense when seen through the lens of "this is a person who feels isolated screaming out for any kind of acknowledgement of their existence".

In addition to these reasons, there is the economic side. They're spending money on frivolous but attainable luxury items because the traditional economic path of a house and family seems impossibly out of reach.

You can save for 6 months to buy a car mod for 1500, but when local median house price is $1,000,000 they may feel like it's pointless to even attempt being a home owner.

Except people have been doing obnoxious shit to feel better about themselves since forever ago. Look two hundred years back and you will see European men duelling each other over the most random stuffs. If anything, I'd say I am seeing less modded cars and hearing less bikes with more decibels than jet engines than I did 20 years ago.

I feel like you just grasping to any social phenomenon to try to insert your own agenda.

Dueling is a very different phenomenon. Duels were typically done away from urban centers and involved only the participants. They were not done to annoy other random people.

I'm no expert, but you could do a whole deep dive on the sociology behind dueling to get a better sense of what socioeconomic conditions led to it.

Just saying "the stegosaurus is like a peanut butter cookie" to establish an analogy doesn't immediately confer wisdom. An analogy has to actually be between things that have meaningful similarity. If we were, say, talking about street racing for pink slips, then maybe the dueling analogy would be more useful.

Glad someone pointed out motorcycles. While cars with modded exhausts are loud and obnoxious, there are relatively few modders out there, so they're pretty rare. And one has to go out of one's way to make their stock car ear-splitting.

Motorcycles on the other hand, especially cruisers, are a simple straight-pipe mod away from "totally obnoxious." And the average motorcycle is going to be louder than the average car.

> Loud exhausts everywhere - pickups, domestic V6/V8's, motorcycles.

> Super-bright headlights/aux lights improperly mounted or operated, blinding you at night.

> Stereos you can almost feel before you hear them.

So no different than 30 years ago.

Around here it's a part of gang "culture". The point, IMO, is to remind citizens that the police is not doing anything and gangbangers are free to do whatever they want. As any blatantly illegal behavior it benefits criminals via intimidation and suppression of reports of their activity. Also "swangas".

I remember some friends talking about motorcycles, and one was wondering how much horsepower you could get out of a Harley Davidson motorcycle.

And another friend quipped, "You don't tune a Harley for power, you tune it for noise!"

Back to tuner cars, I've always thought the perfect invention would be a tuner-car-audio-experience-device.

Basically, a device that you plug into the cigarette lighter and it uses some method of figuring out the engine RPM (and maybe throttle position). Then it would generate cool engine sounds and send them to bluetooth stream / fm broadcast / audio jack, for the car audio system.

You could drive a quiet car, but inside it would feel like a formula one car, a 12-cylinder italian car, motorcycle, tugboat or jet fighter.

I would say spaceship, but those days are gone since every EV nowadays sounds like an cheapo alien orchestra already.

It exists!

https://us.wrumersound.com/

Plug this into your car's OBD II port and run their app on your phone, and it sounds like whatever you configure the app to.

V8, F1, lawnmower, or fart noise!

I think the Dodge Charger EV has a lot of the fake engine noises, both inside and out. Sounds like it was a very important feature.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a63141971/dodge-charger-da...

Many modern cars do this due to how quiet ICE are now. Oftentimes the fake interior noise is awful. I pull the modules that inject the fake noise, it makes the interior much quieter. YMMV.

My buddy was a huge VW fan and loved taking a stock Jetta or Passat and modding the engine and transmission while making it look completely stock. He was one of the few people I knew who loved the idea of the "wolf in sheeps clothing". The guy who pulls up with a Mustang and then blowing off his doors and the Mustang guy wanted to see what he actually had under the hood. The low key stealth approach I always though was the best way to do this. You don't draw attention to yourself either from cops or LEO's.

I still feel like its the right way to do this, but clearly in the digital age of social media and the constant need for attention and dopamine hits, its now the exception instead of the rule as you have correctly pointed out.

Oh yes. I used to have a VW van (a T4) which had had a V6 transplant and an aftermarket turbo retrofitted (not by me - I am a quite capable mechanic, but not THAT capable.)

It was still a VW van, but it gave a few unsuspecting BMW drivers a surprise. Some 370bhp tends to get others' attention when unleashed.

Have you considered people can enjoy different things than you? I personally enjoy a nice exhaust tone and I like subwoofers as well. And I don't like them just because they might piss off somebody like yourself, it's for my own enjoyment. Not all exhausts and subwoofers are created equal. Most modern cars with 'premium' sound systems like Bose, JBL, etc. have subwoofers, but they're usually small and don't require a lot of power. The system they installed in this car might have been the OEM premium sound package as well - the one Toyota offers is JBL and comes with a subwoofer. Do you get mad when it's OEM or just DIY? The GR Corolla has a 'loud' exhaust from the factory as well. Loud enough that you'd probably rage at it judging by this comment.

People buy aftermarket exhausts for a variety of reasons. They can produce a different tone, cut down on exhaust 'drone' (which the GR Corolla is notorious for with it's factory exhaust), offer alternative styling, provide weight savings, and reduce backpressure/improve flow. It's not just about volume. Certainly you could be an asshole who buys an exhaust just because it's loud, but that's not why the majority are doing it, it's for their own enjoyment and usually provides a performance improvement. If they really wanted to achieve max volume they could just do an open dump exhaust or a hood exit, it would be cheaper than buying a Borla and significantly louder.

Have you considered people can enjoy different things than you?

Things like peace and quiet? Assholes with loud exhausts have made it abundantly clear that our tastes differ, yes.

To each their own. Enjoy your boring life.

Your nuanced hobby and aesthetics is reduced to “stupid loudness” in people’s minds because the primary interaction other people have with it is “I am being subjected to stupid loudness”, yes.

If they're really bothered by temporary noise that much, they should just invest in some ear plugs or noise cancelling headphones.

Spoken like someone that never even had to try. Neither of those can physically mitigate spikes of noise from engines, exhausts, or subs, and will only cause more harm if the noise floor is low.

Why spend three paragraphs insisting on the innocence of your motives when you’re just going to fall back on “fuck you suck it up” when pressed on the consequences of your actions?

I like sparring. If I went around punching random people in the face I'd get arrested. If you want to drive a loud car, tha's fine; just do it in a way that doesn't bother other people. Imagine how much better the world would be if everyone put in even the slightest bit of effort to be kind and compassionate to each other.

> Have you considered people can enjoy different things than you?

Midnight to 3 am driving around and around in circles in a residential area with a modified exhaust. Stopping occasionally to restart the car to play the programmed "startup growl".

Who wouldn't enjoy such a thing?

I feel certain that there are people that enjoy their lives as serial killers too.

I'm all for letting people enjoy whatever they enjoy, as long as they don't impose it on the rest of us. That's just part of living in a society.

I say this with respect and part jokingly but this is basically just a "shakes fist at cloud". And I don't disagree with you! But if people use their signal and drive sane it's not much a problem for me. Very rarely do I see a modded car like this regardless of Make - and people make every Make/Model loud it's not just restricted to the aforementioned.

Your mileage may vary and that's all good

Hard disagree. You might be ok with loud engines splitting your eardrums and interrupting your sleep (or worse, your baby's sleep!), but society as a whole should not.

Live and let live is good and all, but GP said it was about "inflicting their taste on others," so I would read that comment to mean the inconsiderate things we should not let live. Loud pipes, unsafe driving, and loud subwoofers--I'll shake my fist at those clouds all day.

Well as mentioned in the above comment I do not disagree with parent nor do I disagree with you. Vehicles of these extremes are rare, in my experience, as mentioned as well.

In practicality, I care more about how people drive than the loudness of their engine.

No offense but this is kinda soft mate. A loud car doesn’t “split your eardrums”, it’s at worst a minor inconvenience, and as part of living in a diverse society we accept that we will be inconvenienced sometimes.

I wouldn't tolerate being "inconvenienced" by someone's broken sewer pipe I'd ask them to fix it.

Straight piped trucks can easily hit over 100dB (I've seen numbers as high as 118dB) which is well above the 85dB hearing damage level, and is at the level where hearing damage occurs in minutes or even seconds of exposure.

Sorry I don't want to get tinnitus just because some asshole wanted to make his truck "sound better".

the most unsafe drivers I see usually have a "baby on board" bumper sticker. foot out the window, eyes down looking at a phone, can't stay in their lane, let alone manage a consistent (speed limit obeying) pace

If you think parents drive less safe on average than young men, you are very incorrect.

Unexpectedly successful fishing comment lol

Are they louder? Stay on topic.

Also, you are telling on yourself about woman drivers. Moms don’t drive worse than childless women. And men don’t put those bumper stickers on their cars if they can help it.

>shakes fist at cloud

the reason "shakes fist at cloud" is something to laugh at is because clouds aren't sentient. they aren't blocking out the sun to annoy you, they're just clouds. it's a natural phenomena, not something you can do anything about.

people who modify their cars to intentionally disturb the people around them are (theoretically) sentient. the guy in this article is not an uncontrollable natural phenomenon, he's just a guy who's chosen to make loud noises his hobby. shaking your fist at him is perfectly reasonable.

I have been spending my mid-life days pondering getting a used Porsche 986.1 Boxter, cuz, y'know, mid-life. And so reading reviews and I constantly see this refrain: "car drives great, wonderful handling, good value... but not worth it because the engine sound/note is so dull."

I just have to give my head a shake. It makes zero sense to me.

I have loud subwoofers in my car, but they're for my enjoyment. The fact that others might hear them is an unfortunate reality of physics. I try to be considerate in not blasting it in residential areas, late at night, etc., but bass is bass - it travels.

I find the modded import scene was much bigger around 15 to 20 years ago. About 5 years ago it was loud Mustangs and Camaros. Now, down here in the deep south, pickup trucks are by far the most obnoxious. (source: I walk around my city everyday)

Subwoofers are really fun though.

There are other people around you who probably don't think they're fun. Hot tip: the other people you see out and about are real, thinking humans just like you who have their own thoughts and emotions and world views.

You should consider how your actions impact others.

Hot tip: the other users you see online are often real, thinking humans just like you who have their own thoughts and emotions and world views.

You should consider how your sarcastic and condescending comments online impact others.

Wild, there are also other people around you who might they're more fun too, they might want you to turn it up.

Unfortunately for those other people, there are rules and social customs about not being an inane goober when you're in a shared public space.

My subwoofer makes a huge difference for me inside the car without being loud enough for you to hear it. They give a nice rounded tone to the music. As with literally everything, don't hate the people that like the sound of subwoofers - hate the people that abuse them.

I am aware, that’s why I don’t have one in my flat (and I don’t own a car for that matter so none there either) but they’re still a hell of a lot of fun.

A single 12 isn't really going to be too audible outside the car unless its being pushed very loud (excess of 600W~).

Most people don't have two alternators, with battery banks to drive multiple 12s or 15s.

There is effectively no point ever where my system has "impacted" others.

Have you considered that your overly condescending tone is quite ironic given the content of your comment?

Let the kids be kids, they'll grow out of it, we all do, as opposed to grown men rolling coal in their dually Fs and RAMs. Give me a nice riced out Integra or a Sylvia any day, or a nice low rider instead. A Camry with a rally rear spoiler is sad sight indeed though.

Harleys are my scorn locally, these "tough" patched up dudes with a day job. But what's even more annoying is that there are no helmet laws in my state, all that taking up ICU beds and all and none of them organ donors I'd assume.

I just wish these people comprehended and cared that you can be 2km away on a country road with your stupid engine and it's still loud as !@#$ for thousands of people in the city.

I live on the edge of a city and this is a nightly thing. It's louder than the air ambulance occasionally landing at the nearby helipad. It's louder than the 6-8 trains running through town.

I never appreciated a proper muffler until I didn't have one. I was driving a 27-year-old Honda Civic, and the rusty muffler fell off one day. On the way to go get it fixed, the typically quiet Honda made a ridiculous amount of noise. I had no idea my car could be that loud.

None of the other things except the sound bothers me. It’s just so goddamn loud, like unbelievably loud.

nah, I like cars, and I agree. I have some cosmetic mods on mine (it's none of those models in your list) and they're very subtle and inoffensive. very much iykyk. I also want a new exhaust, but mostly because I want a deeper tone, not louder.

I’m always reminded of this classic: https://youtube.com/shorts/IzeTYJJXzIk

It has an antipodean non identical twin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo2JcTk4nBE

There is a saying "The smallest dog barks the loudest". Those that make the most noise to be seen are the most insecure in their position in the world.

> their mods often seem directed to inflicting their cars on everyone else

Flies in the face of all the talk about consent. I did not consent to this...

Some exhausts can sound cool but at someone that lives near a road I don’t think people should subject other people to loud exhausts. Just because someone installed a subwoofer (depending on how the audio was before) doesn’t necessarily mean they are blasting it so loud it is bothering other people. Some cars have pretty horrible stock sound

I wish the car modders would adopt things like Active Sound Design (ASD) that some car manufactures are using to pipe vroom-vroom noises through the car's speaker system. It seems like the perfect compromise. The driver wants to hear his car's loud vroomvroom, and everyone else -doesn't- have to hear it.

As a car enthusiast, I hate that fake engine sound. It’s so inauthentic and is on the same level as someone painting racing stripes or flames on a Toyota Camry so that it “looks faster”

The drivers of such cars want to draw attention to themselves. But I wish your solution would psychologically trick some of them at least. I sometimes catch myself holding my breath when one of these passes by and it is still very distressing even if I temporarily plug my years with my fingers.

Hearing the vroomvroom isn’t the same as feeling the vroomvroom.

These "technologies" are unbelievably "cringe" (for a lack of a better word).

Car enthusiasts want the sound to come from some mechanical aspect. They want the sound and smell of burning fuel, pushing pistons up and down at extreme speeds with hundreds of other rotating and spinning parts working in unison for a cool sound.

A speaker diaphragm moving up and down 20 to 100 times a second doesn't quite scratch that itch. A speaker can nearly "replicate" any sound, which takes the fun out of it.

That's how you know you've got the COOLEST car on the block! (unfortunately)

All show no go is the trend these days - and not just with cars.

I live in the state that's in the top 5 in the US for worst drivers. Yes, it's Florida. Constant racing on I95, Camaros racing Mustangs, Nissan drivers hallucinating they are in an M3/4, burning coal left and right. A Cyber Truck or a Denali tailgating me. Often, there are shootouts. It's nuts.

My main peeve is the scooters, like Razer, Hiboy, Segway. I can't take my dog for a walk without being assaulted by one from behind without a warning bell or a slowdown on a sidewalk. I've begun simply taking up the whole width of the sidewalk, I'm wide and so is my fido. Let them eat asphalt if they like. Sometimes they argue, but I carry pepper spray. AirPods on full ANC. It's good that none wear helmets, attrition is a thing. Oh, and they also get on the highways. It's madness.

Is it similar on the continent these days?

More noise than actual speed.

> So it is about subjecting OTHER people to his car.

Having not read the article yet, this is an assumption. He could himself enjoy the kick/boom of a subwoofer (I know I do, it makes music so much better) or the sound of his own exhaust (I never have personally cared about this)

Whether they are purposefully inflicting it on others or not, it takes a certain type of inconsiderate person to say "F*ck everyone else and their preferences for intact eardrums and uninterrupted sleep, I like the way it sounds."

I'm skeptical.

One thing I learned early on was that I could crank a car stereo up to levels that were uncomfortable, and rock the car with a pair of nice 12 inch subs ... and outside the car it was pretty weak. Audible, perhaps, but not for very far and nothing you'd really feel. Even with the windows down, it's surprising how loud it can be inside and still not be all that noteworthy on the outside.

The guys that have radios loud enough to annoy bystanders are deep into hearing damage territory. The ones with subwoofers you can feel in the next lane over aren't running 12s, they have much bigger speakers than that, way, way past the point of where you are doing it for your own kick.

It's very intentional, about the effect outside the vehicle, not the quality of the music inside.

Eh, applies to all brands. Few people care about driving faster. It’s all about being “cool”.

My 1/3 life crisis was buying a Toyota Tacoma Trailhunter long bed last year. It’s been my dream to own a Tacoma for several years, so it was finally time to make it happen.

Eventually, I’d love to modify the exhaust to make it slightly louder. The turbo noise from the raised air intake is awesome enough and I’m curious if other drivers on the road can hear the turbo noise when I drive by them.

Please do not make your exhaust louder. I’m sure you will not listen to a rando on the internet but it will annoy the shit out of thousands of people for what? Some yuk yuks? I get it. It’s fun. I would enjoy it too, but not yours. please don’t.

Odds are excellent they cant hear it. If they can hear it they either absolutely do not care or find it mildly irritating and blame it on the nearest 1500 owner.

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