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Comment by tmh88j | Hacker News Reader

> And, as anyone who ever had to drive a car with a broken exhaust muffler can say, it's also nothing special...

Loud isn't the goal, the tone is. The Lexus LFA is a perfect example of this[1]. It's not extremely loud for a car of that caliber, but it's lauded as one of the best sounding cars ever made. Poorly designed exhaust (or no exhaust in the case of your broken muffler) on an otherwise great sounding engine almost always ruins the tone and makes it unbearable to listen to. Bad exhaust on a bad sounding engine is just miserable.

[1] https://www.hotcars.com/heres-why-the-lexus-lfas-screaming-v...

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> Loud isn't the goal, the tone is.

I wish this was actually the case in practice. There s definitely something special and musical about some ice engines, a true sensual experience.

But then in practice, people who actually value that (as in, pay money), their cars just ends up being loud and obnoxious.

So where are they, all these quiet, beautifully aurally tuned cars (emphasis on quiet)? Not everybody is driving thos3 lexusses just judging from the racket.

> So where are they, all these quiet, beautifully aurally tuned cars (emphasis on quiet)?

You won't notice them if you're not interested in cars, but there are tons of them and Lexus/Toyota are responsible for quite a few. The RC-F, IS500 and LC500 sound amazing, as did the GS-F and IS-F. Toyota also made some iconic engines such as the 2JZ-GTE in the MKIV Supra and the 2GR engine that Lotus used in the Evora.

> But then in practice, people who actually value that (as in, pay money), their cars just ends up being loud and obnoxious.

It's the other way around: There are plenty of cars that sound beautiful unmodified, and aren't unreasonably loud, but they tend to be the most expensive cars on the market.

So people often modify their cars to sound different, but getting a refined sound that way costs a lot of money. The cheapest modifications make the car sound terrible, so you're more likely to notice the cheap poorly modified cars than anything.

At the end of the day considerate people are going to drive any car quietly in a quiet setting. Inconsiderate people will start their car up in track mode at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning and leave it to warn up for 20 minutes, and bounce of the rev-limiter going around town.

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