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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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...)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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 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 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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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)
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.
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."
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.
Lots of weird judgment and smugness in this thread. This guy bought a fun car that he's excited about? Well obviously he's POOR and IMMATURE because if he was RICH and OLD he would buy an ELECTRIC CAR that's WAY FASTER (in a straight line) and doesn't make nasty noises and smells!!! what an idiot!!!
I'm all for cracking down on excessively loud and stinky cars, but the GR Corolla is not that loud, and it has modern emissions controls. It is also, believe it or not, possible to own a moderately loud car (even with a modded exhaust) without subjecting your neighbors to backfires, 40 minute idling sessions, and loud fly-bys at every hour of the day and night.
The attitudes in this thread really show that people just don't get it, which is probably why the driver's car is an endangered species in $CURRENT_YEAR. How many cars are available in the US with a manual transmission these days? How many that don't cost six figures (or more)? You don't have to be excited about the same things as this guy, but there is a whole lot of projection going on in here from people who can't seem to think beyond how you're perceived by others as the main factor in choosing a car. Have you considered that maybe this guy just likes the car?
> It is also, believe it or not, possible to own a moderately loud car (even with a modded exhaust)
Not legally in many places. California limits exhaust levels to 95 dbA or less, and I'm betting that OP's mods violate that given that "ATAK exhaust systems produce the highest dB (decibel) levels in the Borla line" [0]. Washington state prohibits modifying exhaust "in a manner which will amplify or increase the noise emitted by the engine of such vehicle above that emitted by the muffler originally installed on the vehicle" [1]
> Have you considered that maybe this guy just likes the car?
I'm inclined to give the same amount of consideration for this guy's preferences as he is towards the thousands of people he chooses to subject to unnecessary, annoying, unhealthy[1], and likely illegal noise.
If people want to roast this guy for installing annoying aftermarket noisemakers then I will not try to stop them. I mean to address the (plenty of) more generic comments like this one:
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A GR Corolla goes 0-60 in 4.9 - 5.4sec.
My unexotic stock electric does 0-60 in around 4.8sec, +/-.
So the same performance that requires a stupid amount of wasted energy as heat and noise can be had from stock electric, with a couple hundred ms leftover. Do you care about performance, or do you just want to just fart out a bunch of noise?
I get traditional car culture, but electrics embody the "money talks, wealth whispers" truism.
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and this one:
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My midlife crisis car would probably be a land cruiser. No need to go fast. Space and chill is best.
A 3 cylinder Corolla, regardless of how fast, is just people transportation at best and in the worst inefficient way possible. A normal base 23k usd Corolla , not saying anything against the car mechanically it is a great machine for what it is.
Just, overkill. Can’t go fast, need to have higher insurance, it’s more at risk for theft, and it’s not easily replaceable as compared to a 23k corolla.
It looks like all three Borla ATAK catbacks for the GR Corolla are active exhuasts[0], so you can dynamically switch between quiet operation and loud operation.
> ELECTRIC CAR that's WAY FASTER (in a straight line)
Why in a straight line? My Acura ZDX handles curves as well as any ICE car I've ever driven. If anything, it sticks to the ground better due to the low center of gravity from the battery pack.
> Lots of weird judgment and smugness in this thread. This guy bought a fun car that he's excited about? Well obviously he's POOR and IMMATURE because if he was RICH and OLD he would buy an ELECTRIC CAR that's WAY FASTER (in a straight line) and doesn't make nasty noises and smells!!! what an idiot!!!
As someone who happens to drive an electric car that is wicked fast (and not just in a straight line...), I'm not sure why you'd suggest that the weird judgement and smugness is directed only at guys driving gas cars. I get plenty of crap over driving an EV. Especially a performance-oriented one.
I love manual transmissions too, but you're just as judgy.
> I'm not sure why you'd suggest that the weird judgement and smugness is directed only at guys driving gas cars.
Because that's what's happening in this thread?
I have no problem with EVs or NPC style cars, or really any kind of car except those that are excessively large and heavy to the point that people sharing roads with them are placed in significant danger. I own a CR-V hybrid as a family hauler and it's fantastic in that role despite being boring as fuck. Sometimes boring is good.
> Now from the rear it looks like four black bazookas are hidden below the bumper and on start-up it sounds like a fire-breathing dragon.
> Those who know cars appreciate my understated taste
This guy is immature because he has the taste of a teenager in love with Fast & Furious and Limp Bizkit. The entire article's language made me cringe like never.
My ongoing midlife crisis vehicle swerves in a different direction: I bought a 1988 Nishiki 1207 at a yard sale for $40. Mostly stock save for a new seat. With the wheels out of true, the stickers plastered over with garbage, the brakes loose, the front tire visibly cracking, the rear cassette visibly rusted, and the rack mounts stripped, the bike needs some work. I am motivated to finally really learn bike maintenance after putting it off for 30 years
It's a rewarding project! I fixed up a freebie old Schwinn roadbike a few years ago and it's so much fun to ride. I have a freebie Nishiki too waiting for a decision on what to do with it--touring bike or fixie conversion. Enjoy the time turning wrenches and then on the road!
You'd think that on a website that has the word "hacker" in its title, more people would be supportive of someone "hacking" their car, but I guess there's not a lot of car people here.
I am a car person. I have a fun-to-drive car that I have modified. This guy is getting all the hate he deserves.
You don't get to be an assh*le and subject everyone to loud exhaust (I looked up his exhaust, it's 105 dB!), and be upset if people call you an assh*le.
Anyone who defends him is essentially saying "it's ok to be an assh*le to everyone around you, as long as you get yours."
The only socially appropriate ways to inconvenience other people are to build dark patterns into your app to juice subscriptions, dump VC-funded detritus on the street and call it a startup, or take their life’s work and create an algorithm to regurgitate it back to them without paying them for it. Making your car louder? That’s just rude and inconsiderate.
> Someone putting performance exhaust on their cool car isn't likely to disturb me in my home.
We are not all so lucky. I live one door down from an avenue that does sometimes get these kinds of vehicles and it 100% disturbs me in my home.
I understand that living in a society means that sometimes people will do things that inconvenience me. I am much more understanding of that when the inconvenience provides some clear benefit to the other person in return.
But in this case, annoying strangers is the point. When you're in the car, you aren't hearing the 100+dB exhaust. It's not a necessary path to optimizing the car's performance. It's just being an asshole to demonstrate to the world that they are powerless to stop you from being an asshole.
I live in an area with mostly a grid road pattern. It's very quiet, mostly the sounds of nature. But about a mile away from my house there's a very nice road with great curves and few intersections. Every weekend the guys with the exhausts come out and it sounds like I'm at a racetrack. They certainly don't care that there are hundreds of people nearby that have to listen to this.
No hacking involved. The tech equivalent is buying an Alienware PC from Best Buy and then taking it to the local computer shop to have them put in RGB fans and a liquid cooling system, while not overclocking we’re doing anything more than playing Minecraft sometimes
The modifications the author describes are considered in the car community to be incredibly immature, poorly researched, and basic. "Borla ATAK" is a four-letter-word because they're bought and sold exclusively by the "louder = better" crowd and their near-ubiquity on late-model Ford Mustangs is the bane of people with functional eardrums everywhere. People can modify their cars and be happy with it, but if someone customized their house by installing an outward facing loudspeaker system that played nothing but remixes of "barbie girl" on repeat, I'd probably express criticism.
hacker vibes would be sharing how he learned to program the ecu with a laptop. or putting in a short throw. running linux on the headunit, etc. but no, all this guy did was put a louder, annoying exhaust on it and drives it like its a go kart. im just left wondering what stickers he will tastefully add to it? haha but its ok, its a mid life crisis after all.. if he is feeling happy and like a child again, thats totally great
I owned only EVs and PHEVs since 2012. The GR Corolla was so compelling that it pulled me back to an ICE. I had forgotten what it felt like to have FUN while driving. The biggest feature for me is that I could pull the DCM fuse and not get constantly spied on. The next-best feature is that I can disable the center screen. And I love my physical buttons.
The GR Corolla is definitely on my extended list of "cars I'd put in my oversized garage if I won the lottery." That and a Fiesta ST. I love tossable cars, even though I also love being able to rip a 0-60 in 2.9s on a whim and never having to wait in line for gas.
The Corolla bangs. I had a 1990 model that got me through years of zero problems, it was fully mechanical. We're still a Toyota family and same reliability: I took our current non-electric car to a new mechanic for the yearly check last week and asked him how much life it has left, he says until the rest of my life (city emissions will cancel it well before).
Agreed. I switched to an aftermarket catback (sxth single exit, lol) over the past year and while I really enjoyed the difference in tone, the increased volume level was just barely intolerable. So I'm back on the OEM one.
When my wife was pregnant, our garage had an ND Miata (mine), a BRZ (hers) and an Elise (also hers). We pretty quickly decided that we were going to need some kind of car that we could reasonably put a car seat in, and while the BRZ nominally had a back seat, neither of us were interested in trying to fit a car seat and child into it.
We actually did consider a GR corolla, but ended up getting a used evo x that's been pretty fun instead.
A lift would be rad, but I think we'd have to completely redo the garage doors to get enough vertical clearance for it. In a couple years I think we're planning to redo the garage so that it's more effective as a workshop, maybe we can include a lift as part of that.
I accidentally bought a midlife crisis car: a Subaru Trailseeker EV station wagon. It was cheaper (and more to form) than the 2026 Outback.
It just happens to be the fastest production vehicle Subaru has ever sold. Rip-your-face-off speed wasn’t even what I was after, I just wanted an EV wagon and it’s the only one in existence. Still: stupid fun and very unique car, I’ve had it for two months and haven’t seen another one on the road yet.
In 2026 the modded gas cars that are so much slower and ridiculously loud are honestly confusing. I absolutely love them for autocross, but people building track cars and then...never taking them to the track, pretending their suburb is a track, is just sad.
I recently got the slightly smaller sister (the Solterra). The Trailseeker is actually known as the e-Outback outside North America, and it looks it.
On a straight line full pedal down it will spin the front tires. Absurdly fun. Not as nimble around a curve as the sports sedan it replaced but I honestly tell people I don’t miss my old car. And I definitely don’t miss feeding premium gas to the turbo engine.
I respect the BRZ and Miata owners who frequently do track their cars. I can’t help but hope someone makes a small range but lightweight RWD EV that can whip around a curve for them.
Much of the time for a car like this it's more about changing the tone and maybe squeezing a bit more performance out of the car. But along with that there's usually a volume increase. It's a much smaller subset of car owners who change an exhaust just to have an obnoxiously loud one.
For sure, but nobody seeking that buys a Borla ATAK, which has achieved memetic status in car communities for its absurd volume at the expense of everything else.
Starting with a GR Corolla is not cheating, but he could have gone a little further. Swapping a 2GR V6 into Corollas is now the thing to do. Throw in a little nitrous or a turbo and you have a car capable of allowing you to live out your kamikaze dreams.
A friend of mine in college had the same CRX as the author and I’d get rides to campus with him. He passed away in an accident not long after the first Fast movie came out. I totally get what the author is saying about some cars being time machines/memory capsules.
Love my Model Y. Looks boring, tons of stuff can be packed and still comparable acceleration to not that old BMW M3. And no smell and no noise. Fantastic car.
I wish everyone complaining about other people’s choices here were forced to also post the make/model of the very boring cars the commenter drives. People complaining about others mods are doing it out of insecurity… do you point out loud clothes and styling choices of your coworkers too?
I agree with those comments and my vehicles are a 1990 Mazda Miata that I fixed up[1] & and Model 3 Performance. The Model 3 looks boring, but is ridiculously fast. The Miata has the stock engine, intake, & exhaust, so it's not loud. It's not fast, but it's very fun to drive.
I don't care about loud clothes because they don't wake me or my family up at night, or interrupt a conversation during a walk, or hurt my ears while I'm waiting to cross the street.
Things are posted to HN to be discussed and opined on. For some reason somebody's objectively entry level and subjectively tastless car mods were posted here, and people are expressing their opinions.
And, to wit:
1987 Nissan Be1
2011 Nissan Frontier Pro4x
2014 BMW i3 REX
2020 BMW M2 Competition
All with manual transmissions, with the exception of the direct-drive one.
I used to love cars but the roads are too crowded now for sports cars, between other drivers and cops and cameras you’re guaranteed to have a bad time. These days I’m all about utility for my vehicle (plus e-bike for the thrill). I do miss the stick shift sometimes though.
My midlife crisis car would probably be a land cruiser. No need to go fast. Space and chill is best.
A 3 cylinder Corolla, regardless of how fast, is just people transportation at best and in the worst inefficient way possible. A normal base 23k usd Corolla , not saying anything against the car mechanically it is a great machine for what it is.
Just, overkill. Can’t go fast, need to have higher insurance, it’s more at risk for theft, and it’s not easily replaceable as compared to a 23k corolla.
I did enjoy the Vietnamese part and history of fast and the furious. It’s been a good minute since I’ve seen the first one.
The GR Corolla isn't really the same as a Corolla. Different engine, drivetrain, brakes, wheels, exterior, interior, suspension, and more, all built to be a sports car.
It's also very highly acclaimed for being fun to drive, comparable with the other fast hatchbacks (Golf R, Honda Civic Type R, etc), and is pretty fast.
Most people getting a GR Corolla aren't getting it only as a point A to point B car. So your point about it basically just being people transportation is mostly moot.
It's also really completely different from a standard Corolla.
it would be such a blessing to America if the cool-midlife-crisis-move went back to sports cars and got more of those SUV urban assault vehicles off the road
I think people are missing the point: the loudness and ostentatiousness is seen as a celebration of Asian American identity by the author. In Denver there is a similar culture surrounding low-riders and the Latino community on Federal St. Both are a celebration of minority cultures in America.
Judging these car sub-cultures divorced from their communal aspects, or as an expression of mainstream American masculinity is pretty off-base IMO.
My midlife crisis is also cars. I'm in the process of searching for an honest to god mechanic's shop to buy under an LLC just so I have a better place to work on cars than my garage. I have a list of 8 cars I want to own and restomod, all of which probably nobody else cares about, and that's completely fine. There are some vehicles that just speak to my soul, and I want to experience the best possible iteration of that.
I've spent years on track, now I'm much more interested in the experience of daily driving. A car does not need to be a full track build to be fun. My mantra now is much more OEM+, you have to almost squint to realize its not bone stock. The coolest car to me is something that's well-maintained and shows care and love from its owner, not necessarily something loud and flashy. I think the GR Corolla is an excellent platform to build around, and I almost bought one myself although my current newer daily is a Mazda 3 Turbo. Hot hatches and wagons will always hold a special place in my heart.
That said, I have no desire for a particularly loud exhaust, although I'm more than happy to trade off NVH for actual performance.
A few burned out - a high compression turbo charged 1.3L 3 cylinder engine is not a good idea.
VW has one on their Polo GTI but it is the iconic 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder TSI engine (EA888) - the normal Polo has 1L turbo charged 3 cylinder but even they did not try high boost.
I drove an i3 (Tiny sporty electric BMW) for a while, and it really changed how I see this kind of thing. The noise your car makes .. is wasted energy. You are blaring and bragging about your inefficiencies. That tiny i3 will out-accelerate you at every light, and you will be making a ton of noise, while it is nearly silent.
Car people seem to have got 'louder' and 'stronger' correlated in their heads, but they are NOT.
I have an i3 and a 2020 M2 Competition with a 6 speed manual. I assure you the i3 is not faster, and attempting to describe either one as a "better car" is ridiculous because the overlap in their goals and design ethos is two completely separate circles on a Venn diagram, with a little overlap that says "has four wheels". Both excellent cars, neither a substitute for the other whatsoever.
Writing a high brow essay about the ingenuity and hard work of import car culture while driving a modern Corolla iM and paying a mechanic to install a cold air intake. Lol.
Pinnacle of modern internet car guy is cosplaying as a F&F tuner while paying for a Reddit-approved aesthetic via catalogue and never dreaming of driving hard harder than a spirited on-ramp pull.
Self describing a basically stock corolla as a sleeper, just lol. Cargo cultism.
That is not a modern Corolla iM. The iM had about 130hp. The GR has 300. The iM had comfortable, "sensible Corolla" suspension. The GR has race suspension.
This is not a "basically stock" corolla. It's actually a really cool car with a fun story behind its design. Toyota's then-CEO Akio Toyoda is a big car nerd and an accomplished race car driver. The GR Corolla was his dream car. He was directly involved in the design and development of the car, and personally took the prototypes to the track for test drives to provide feedback to the engineering team.
It's ok that this is not your thing, but please do not be condescending towards other people's hobbies.
I'm sure the author is a nice guy, but there's nothing I find more obnoxious than someone driving down a quiet neighbor with a vehicle they've modified to be intentionally loud.
My unexotic stock electric does 0-60 in around 4.8sec, +/-.
So the same performance that requires a stupid amount of wasted energy as heat and noise can be had from stock electric, with a couple hundred ms leftover. Do you care about performance, or do you just want to just fart out a bunch of noise?
I get traditional car culture, but electrics embody the "money talks, wealth whispers" truism.
Your "unexotic stock electric" is boring as shit to drive and corners like a boat. Stomping on the throttle and going very fast in a straight line is a big marketing point for modern EVs with an excess of power (and usually weight), but there's a reason the concept of a "driver's car" exists, and if you think it's just about making noise then you really, really, really don't understand why people buy them.
Who cares? Static skidpad performance has very little to do with how engaging a car is to drive, and engagement is what somebody buying a GRC (or a GR86, or a Miata, etc.) is looking for.
I mean, engagement aside, you are really just showing your ignorance here if you think skid pad max G is a useful metric to capture real world cornering performance except in extremely broad strokes.
If you want an objective measurement that will usefully speak to how these cars feel to drive vs. each other, check out how much they weigh!
I also have an EV, probably the same one as the grandparent...a Tesla Model Y Dual Motor Long Range. It's rated at 0-60 in 4.8s. It also has good handling, with very little body lean through curves, and a lateral G force of around .85 G.
If I switched to the same tires as the Performance version, that would increase to .95 G. That is better than many legacy sports cars.
Those who love engine noise are the modern equivalent of those who, shortly after cars became mass-market, wanted them to include buggy whips. ;-)
More spec sheet flexing, more assumptions that for owners of internal combustion sports cars it's all about the noise. More projection. Another person who just doesn't get it.
I'm sorry to be harsh in this thread, but it's always odd to find these weird empathetic blind spots in people.
The article literally brags about how loud the car is (and makes it sound likr it was modified to be louder?) so it seems like a reasonable point to take issue with.
Fortunately or unfortunately, driving a car is a public activity and even as a hobby, other people are going to be exposed to it in a way that you just don't get from, say, building model boats out of toothpicks.
I'm a big fan of people having hobbies and enjoying them, but we live in a dense and crowded world where stuff like a loud car can negatively affect literally hundreds of other people.
The comments I've replied to in this subthread have nothing to do with the aftermarket exhaust issue. It's just people who've never driven a real sports car (at any price point) posting numbers from the Tesla spec sheets.
less than 1g is pitiful tbh. I’m no pro but have maxed out the meter on my wee sports car >1g front, left and right. it can only muster 0.5g accel so it’s worse than a tesla, am I right? having put in some serious miles on a model 3, those electrics are in another league — below
this car is about handling in the twisties, not on straigh line.
if you care about performance, you should know that its not only momentary performance what matters, but sustaining it and on repeated occasions. this car is made to be driven hard in a circuit or mountain roads. a electric car overheats its battery and its brakes due to their weight.
the thing most close to electric sport car must be the ionic 5n. the rest is just old people saying "hey look how fast i can launch this car on the highway"
ps: most car people dont care about performance, but about the thrill and the emotion of driving
This guy's car may be designed to be driven hard in a circuit or mountain roads, but that ain't what this guy is doing:
> Now when I hit a loopy freeway interchange at night and my GR Corolla carves through the turn, it’s 1996 and I’m cruising in my CRX, getting pho in San Gabriel or rushing to a flyer party at Naga in Long Beach.
So doing the famous LA Stop-and-Go Freeway Circuit.
> We published our own magazines, built our own businesses, and for good and bad, promoted our own outlaw street racer image and our own beauty standard.
Or hitting the 4-way-intersection midnight drift curves.
Lets be honest, most people who drive these kinds of cars drive as many circuits as the average F-150 owner drives on western canyon dirt tracks.
Some do, sure, and if you do that, great, get the best tool for your job. But most people only daydream about these things and simply want the image as an escape from the existential meaningless of their suburban lives (is the op's "midlife crisis" title snark or an actual cry for meaning?)
I'm not gonna prevent people from spending their money on their hobbies, do whatever floats your boat. But if your hobbies are really just reving a loud engine from one strip mall red light to the next red light 1/4 mile down the road, well, that's not the thrill and the emotion of driving, that's a desperate display of loneliness and disconnection.
This is very funny when talking about the GR Corolla specifically because it is notorious for overheating its AWD system after more than a handful of laps of a racetrack.
the first time I drove a model 3 I felt like I couldn't stop. it's on par with my 80s van that has drum brakes on the rear. the brakes just aren't good enough for sport, the car weighs too much. if this is hard to understand, you're living in a different world from motorsports enthusiasts
> Do you care about performance, or do you just want to just fart out a bunch of noise?
WTF are you talking about? MREs will give you your daily nutrition, can be cheaper than actual meals, and definitely wins points against meals, but I don't see puritannical arguments about "Why do you need a real carrot anyway? Taste is overrated" everywhere.
> I get traditional car culture, but electrics embody the "money talks, wealth whispers" truism.
My midlife crisis car is same price, much faster, more comfortable, and doesn’t wake the neighborhood when I drive it.
If you must relive the nostalgic, early 1900s technology of generating motion by rattling metal pistons with gasoline instead of steam then why not open Autotrader and buy any one of the Supras, 300ZX, 3000GTs, or other great 90s tuner cars that can be had for the same $50k as this 1.6 liter leaf blower. Shit, there’s a convertible 300ZX for $20k and now you’ve got $30k for mods.
I had a coworker who one day showed up to work, pointed out the window and said look I bought a midlife crisis car very matter-of-factly, and I will never understand this. You don't need to do anything, nobody is making you do this.
> You don't need to do anything, nobody is making you do this.
Hey, you just figured out the entire point of buying a mid-life crisis car!
It's a joke to begin with, but if you are actually curious: One day you wake up and realize you're getting older, you can't take the money with you, and that "dream car" from your teens you always wanted to own is suddenly very much in reach.
It's now or never. May as well enjoy it for a few years until the novelty wears off.
I'm not really a car guy, but I grabbed my midlife crisis car last summer because it was the last model year they are going to make it. It gives me joy every time I drive it, even though no one has a clue what it is as it's rather boring looking.
Once I no longer gain joy from driving it, I will sell it and move back to something practical and economical again.
It's not for anyone else, it's for me. For a lot of men around that point in life this is an important mental switch. At least that's how I personally see it, others will have their own reasons!
Probably just joking around, not serious. I said the same thing when I bought my Camaro years ago. The only better choice would have been a Corvette. If you are 40+, every second comment will have some form of mid-life crisis slant to it, so you just run with it as the joke.
But the truth is that many of us have been buying such irresponsible sports cars for our entire lives, it didn't start in mid-life ;-)
I almost ... almost bought a hat with a fake mullet sewn in just for when I was driving the Camaro, all for the lulz. Some people don't take themselves too seriously, and I'm definitely in that camp.
I've wanted a Porsche my entire life. Doesn't have to be a track monster - actually, I'd prefer a lower-powered one. I want the handling of a Boxster, but a truly fast car is only fun on the track.
When I was young, I couldn't justify the cost. Now that I'm a bit older I could afford it, but I can't spare the time for a hobby. With kids still in child seats, I had to stick with a practical car.
When I'm 50? The kids will be old enough to sit up front. I probably still won't have a lot of time for a hobby, but I do have money now.
Buying a midlife crisis car doesn't mean that you feel it's a rite of passage. It doesn't mean someone felt like they had to. It might just mean that for the entire first half of their lives, there has always been a reason to /not/ buy the expensive toy they wanted. They finally treated themselves.
> I want the handling of a Boxster, but a truly fast car is only fun on the track.
This is so true. A while back I had a sixth generation Camaro SS 1LE. The handling was sublime. Think 1.5 scale Miata. Cornered on rails, begged to be driven faster, faster. And 455hp on tap, it was definitely no slouch. But when I took it out to the rural twisty roads for some fun, I found that I would be entering corners at 80+ mph if I wanted to make it do any work. That is categorically a bad idea in all regards, there is so much energy in play at that speed that one unexpected patch of gravel can end your existence. Loved the car, but to drive it safely meant never going past 2/10 of it's ability except on track days.
As compared to (much longer ago) a 2.5RS that I had back when they were cool (pre-WRX days in the US) and you could fling that thing around with no regards to propriety, and it was fun because it didn't have much power, didn't have that much actual capability, but it was relatively light and very communicative. Much better choice if you're not going for track days.
I guess what I don't get is the part where you broadcast that it's a midlife crisis. If I bought a super expensive computer or house or vacation I wouldn't walk into the office and announce I've had a midlife crisis. Maybe I'm being too literal, lol
> I guess what I don't get is the part where you broadcast that it's a midlife crisis
A number of my friends have said this as a joke (the kind of joke someone finds funny when they have a stable job, stable marriage, and a couple of kids, I guess)
A few others have definitely not been joking, and hey, if the red sportscar and chasing women half your age lets you momentarily forget about how much you hate your job, your mortgage, and your ex-wife... I can't really find fault with that?
I'd imagine that it's them doing something they earnestly want to do, but trying to lampshade something that they believe people will perceive of them or be judgmental about. Like most self-deprecating humor, people often want to signal that they're 'in' on their behaviors and not completely unaware of how they're perceived.
I loved driving a sportbike with a tune and an unrestricted racing exhaust, if I revved it just right I could make it backfire directly into your rolled down window
Cute, but you haven't really lived until you've ripped an apocalyptic burnout in front of the dude that's been tailgating you for the last N miles. Trading ~1k worth of tire wear for coating the front of their car with rock chips and molten asphalt is a damn good deal.
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.
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.
>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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
[delayed]
Similar with lifted trucks.
Lifts are bad for driveshafts, suspension, tires, etc
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...
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.
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.
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.
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 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...)
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/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wild, there are also other people around you who might they're more fun too, they might want you to turn it up.
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.
None of the other things except the sound bothers me. It’s just so goddamn loud, like unbelievably loud.
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.
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
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 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 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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)
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.
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."
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.
Lots of weird judgment and smugness in this thread. This guy bought a fun car that he's excited about? Well obviously he's POOR and IMMATURE because if he was RICH and OLD he would buy an ELECTRIC CAR that's WAY FASTER (in a straight line) and doesn't make nasty noises and smells!!! what an idiot!!!
I'm all for cracking down on excessively loud and stinky cars, but the GR Corolla is not that loud, and it has modern emissions controls. It is also, believe it or not, possible to own a moderately loud car (even with a modded exhaust) without subjecting your neighbors to backfires, 40 minute idling sessions, and loud fly-bys at every hour of the day and night.
The attitudes in this thread really show that people just don't get it, which is probably why the driver's car is an endangered species in $CURRENT_YEAR. How many cars are available in the US with a manual transmission these days? How many that don't cost six figures (or more)? You don't have to be excited about the same things as this guy, but there is a whole lot of projection going on in here from people who can't seem to think beyond how you're perceived by others as the main factor in choosing a car. Have you considered that maybe this guy just likes the car?
> It is also, believe it or not, possible to own a moderately loud car (even with a modded exhaust)
Not legally in many places. California limits exhaust levels to 95 dbA or less, and I'm betting that OP's mods violate that given that "ATAK exhaust systems produce the highest dB (decibel) levels in the Borla line" [0]. Washington state prohibits modifying exhaust "in a manner which will amplify or increase the noise emitted by the engine of such vehicle above that emitted by the muffler originally installed on the vehicle" [1]
> Have you considered that maybe this guy just likes the car?
I'm inclined to give the same amount of consideration for this guy's preferences as he is towards the thousands of people he chooses to subject to unnecessary, annoying, unhealthy[1], and likely illegal noise.
[0] https://www.borla.com/products/atak
[1] https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=46.37.390
[2] https://noiseawareness.org/noise-hurts/impact-on-health/
If people want to roast this guy for installing annoying aftermarket noisemakers then I will not try to stop them. I mean to address the (plenty of) more generic comments like this one:
---
A GR Corolla goes 0-60 in 4.9 - 5.4sec.
My unexotic stock electric does 0-60 in around 4.8sec, +/-.
So the same performance that requires a stupid amount of wasted energy as heat and noise can be had from stock electric, with a couple hundred ms leftover. Do you care about performance, or do you just want to just fart out a bunch of noise?
I get traditional car culture, but electrics embody the "money talks, wealth whispers" truism.
---
and this one:
---
My midlife crisis car would probably be a land cruiser. No need to go fast. Space and chill is best.
A 3 cylinder Corolla, regardless of how fast, is just people transportation at best and in the worst inefficient way possible. A normal base 23k usd Corolla , not saying anything against the car mechanically it is a great machine for what it is.
Just, overkill. Can’t go fast, need to have higher insurance, it’s more at risk for theft, and it’s not easily replaceable as compared to a 23k corolla.
There is more to performance than 0-60. But Elon told normies that's what matters, now suddenly everyone quotes those times like gospel.
Do you mean a real Land Cruiser, like the ones that can cross deserts? I'm with you.
Land Cruisers are great! If this guy wants a Land Cruiser then he should get one. His interest in Land Cruisers is not my issue with his comment.
It looks like all three Borla ATAK catbacks for the GR Corolla are active exhuasts[0], so you can dynamically switch between quiet operation and loud operation.
[0]: https://www.borla.com/2023-2026-toyota-gr-corolla-exhaust-sy...
> ELECTRIC CAR that's WAY FASTER (in a straight line)
Why in a straight line? My Acura ZDX handles curves as well as any ICE car I've ever driven. If anything, it sticks to the ground better due to the low center of gravity from the battery pack.
> I'm all for cracking down on excessively loud and stinky cars, but the GR Corolla is not that loud, and it has modern emissions controls.
Of course it's not loud from the factory, Toyota isn't going to sell a car that violates noise standards.
But he binned the Toyota mufflers and installed something significantly louder.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48924505
> Lots of weird judgment and smugness in this thread. This guy bought a fun car that he's excited about? Well obviously he's POOR and IMMATURE because if he was RICH and OLD he would buy an ELECTRIC CAR that's WAY FASTER (in a straight line) and doesn't make nasty noises and smells!!! what an idiot!!!
As someone who happens to drive an electric car that is wicked fast (and not just in a straight line...), I'm not sure why you'd suggest that the weird judgement and smugness is directed only at guys driving gas cars. I get plenty of crap over driving an EV. Especially a performance-oriented one.
I love manual transmissions too, but you're just as judgy.
> I'm not sure why you'd suggest that the weird judgement and smugness is directed only at guys driving gas cars.
Because that's what's happening in this thread?
I have no problem with EVs or NPC style cars, or really any kind of car except those that are excessively large and heavy to the point that people sharing roads with them are placed in significant danger. I own a CR-V hybrid as a family hauler and it's fantastic in that role despite being boring as fuck. Sometimes boring is good.
Disclaimer: I drive an ND Miata so I "get" it.
> Now from the rear it looks like four black bazookas are hidden below the bumper and on start-up it sounds like a fire-breathing dragon.
> Those who know cars appreciate my understated taste
This guy is immature because he has the taste of a teenager in love with Fast & Furious and Limp Bizkit. The entire article's language made me cringe like never.
My ongoing midlife crisis vehicle swerves in a different direction: I bought a 1988 Nishiki 1207 at a yard sale for $40. Mostly stock save for a new seat. With the wheels out of true, the stickers plastered over with garbage, the brakes loose, the front tire visibly cracking, the rear cassette visibly rusted, and the rack mounts stripped, the bike needs some work. I am motivated to finally really learn bike maintenance after putting it off for 30 years
Zinn & the Art of Road Bike Maintenance, if you are looking for a solid resource.
It's a rewarding project! I fixed up a freebie old Schwinn roadbike a few years ago and it's so much fun to ride. I have a freebie Nishiki too waiting for a decision on what to do with it--touring bike or fixie conversion. Enjoy the time turning wrenches and then on the road!
Riding on a wheel you have built from parts is a joyous thing.
You'd think that on a website that has the word "hacker" in its title, more people would be supportive of someone "hacking" their car, but I guess there's not a lot of car people here.
I am a car person. I have a fun-to-drive car that I have modified. This guy is getting all the hate he deserves.
You don't get to be an assh*le and subject everyone to loud exhaust (I looked up his exhaust, it's 105 dB!), and be upset if people call you an assh*le.
Anyone who defends him is essentially saying "it's ok to be an assh*le to everyone around you, as long as you get yours."
The only socially appropriate ways to inconvenience other people are to build dark patterns into your app to juice subscriptions, dump VC-funded detritus on the street and call it a startup, or take their life’s work and create an algorithm to regurgitate it back to them without paying them for it. Making your car louder? That’s just rude and inconsiderate.
Someone putting performance exhaust on their cool car isn't likely to disturb me in my home.
You know what is? The doings of obnoxious adtech people.
> Someone putting performance exhaust on their cool car isn't likely to disturb me in my home.
We are not all so lucky. I live one door down from an avenue that does sometimes get these kinds of vehicles and it 100% disturbs me in my home.
I understand that living in a society means that sometimes people will do things that inconvenience me. I am much more understanding of that when the inconvenience provides some clear benefit to the other person in return.
But in this case, annoying strangers is the point. When you're in the car, you aren't hearing the 100+dB exhaust. It's not a necessary path to optimizing the car's performance. It's just being an asshole to demonstrate to the world that they are powerless to stop you from being an asshole.
I live in an area with mostly a grid road pattern. It's very quiet, mostly the sounds of nature. But about a mile away from my house there's a very nice road with great curves and few intersections. Every weekend the guys with the exhausts come out and it sounds like I'm at a racetrack. They certainly don't care that there are hundreds of people nearby that have to listen to this.
No hacking involved. The tech equivalent is buying an Alienware PC from Best Buy and then taking it to the local computer shop to have them put in RGB fans and a liquid cooling system, while not overclocking we’re doing anything more than playing Minecraft sometimes
The modifications the author describes are considered in the car community to be incredibly immature, poorly researched, and basic. "Borla ATAK" is a four-letter-word because they're bought and sold exclusively by the "louder = better" crowd and their near-ubiquity on late-model Ford Mustangs is the bane of people with functional eardrums everywhere. People can modify their cars and be happy with it, but if someone customized their house by installing an outward facing loudspeaker system that played nothing but remixes of "barbie girl" on repeat, I'd probably express criticism.
hacker vibes would be sharing how he learned to program the ecu with a laptop. or putting in a short throw. running linux on the headunit, etc. but no, all this guy did was put a louder, annoying exhaust on it and drives it like its a go kart. im just left wondering what stickers he will tastefully add to it? haha but its ok, its a mid life crisis after all.. if he is feeling happy and like a child again, thats totally great
Modern day tech is full of insufferable types that thoroughly enjoy pearl clutching and virtue signaling
Yes, and it inspires a reaction from a whole bunch of other insufferable types that decided the antidote was to be as big a prick as possible.
I don't see any reaction here - just a bunch of people reacting to a fun article with judgement and disparagement.
I owned only EVs and PHEVs since 2012. The GR Corolla was so compelling that it pulled me back to an ICE. I had forgotten what it felt like to have FUN while driving. The biggest feature for me is that I could pull the DCM fuse and not get constantly spied on. The next-best feature is that I can disable the center screen. And I love my physical buttons.
The GR Corolla is definitely on my extended list of "cars I'd put in my oversized garage if I won the lottery." That and a Fiesta ST. I love tossable cars, even though I also love being able to rip a 0-60 in 2.9s on a whim and never having to wait in line for gas.
I had a 2014 Fiesta ST and it was an amazing little car. Obviously quick, but could also get close to 50mpg cruising at highways speeds.
The Corolla bangs. I had a 1990 model that got me through years of zero problems, it was fully mechanical. We're still a Toyota family and same reliability: I took our current non-electric car to a new mechanic for the yearly check last week and asked him how much life it has left, he says until the rest of my life (city emissions will cancel it well before).
I have a GR Corolla and it's great in the mountains! It's tiny light and fun and fits a car seat (barely).
I wouldn't consider a loud GRC w/ catback a "sleeper" though - it's quite the opposite??
Agreed. I switched to an aftermarket catback (sxth single exit, lol) over the past year and while I really enjoyed the difference in tone, the increased volume level was just barely intolerable. So I'm back on the OEM one.
When my wife was pregnant, our garage had an ND Miata (mine), a BRZ (hers) and an Elise (also hers). We pretty quickly decided that we were going to need some kind of car that we could reasonably put a car seat in, and while the BRZ nominally had a back seat, neither of us were interested in trying to fit a car seat and child into it.
We actually did consider a GR corolla, but ended up getting a used evo x that's been pretty fun instead.
Tell me you live in the Bay Area without telling me you live in the Bay Area.
Do you have a lift in your garage?
A lift would be rad, but I think we'd have to completely redo the garage doors to get enough vertical clearance for it. In a couple years I think we're planning to redo the garage so that it's more effective as a workshop, maybe we can include a lift as part of that.
Man, he nails it when he talks about that car culture era. I bought myself a 300zx twin turbo as my first car back then.
The experiences I had driving around in that thing were amazing.
Also though, was short lived. Was young and stupid, wrapped it around a tree shortlty after, never viewed driving the same.
"door ajar" so bad ass.
So, how many "experiences" did you really have, if you crashed it shortly after?
When you're young and dumb and full of energy, you can get a whole lot of experiences accomplished in the space of a single summer.
Probably at least two.
I get it - the enthusiasm - I totally get it. I think I'd sell my soul for an 1980's BMW M3.
I accidentally bought a midlife crisis car: a Subaru Trailseeker EV station wagon. It was cheaper (and more to form) than the 2026 Outback.
It just happens to be the fastest production vehicle Subaru has ever sold. Rip-your-face-off speed wasn’t even what I was after, I just wanted an EV wagon and it’s the only one in existence. Still: stupid fun and very unique car, I’ve had it for two months and haven’t seen another one on the road yet.
In 2026 the modded gas cars that are so much slower and ridiculously loud are honestly confusing. I absolutely love them for autocross, but people building track cars and then...never taking them to the track, pretending their suburb is a track, is just sad.
I recently got the slightly smaller sister (the Solterra). The Trailseeker is actually known as the e-Outback outside North America, and it looks it.
On a straight line full pedal down it will spin the front tires. Absurdly fun. Not as nimble around a curve as the sports sedan it replaced but I honestly tell people I don’t miss my old car. And I definitely don’t miss feeding premium gas to the turbo engine.
I respect the BRZ and Miata owners who frequently do track their cars. I can’t help but hope someone makes a small range but lightweight RWD EV that can whip around a curve for them.
Modding a car to be louder is antisocial behavior and should be illegal.
Much of the time for a car like this it's more about changing the tone and maybe squeezing a bit more performance out of the car. But along with that there's usually a volume increase. It's a much smaller subset of car owners who change an exhaust just to have an obnoxiously loud one.
For sure, but nobody seeking that buys a Borla ATAK, which has achieved memetic status in car communities for its absurd volume at the expense of everything else.
Starting with a GR Corolla is not cheating, but he could have gone a little further. Swapping a 2GR V6 into Corollas is now the thing to do. Throw in a little nitrous or a turbo and you have a car capable of allowing you to live out your kamikaze dreams.
I also own a GR Corolla. it's a fantastic car.
A friend of mine in college had the same CRX as the author and I’d get rides to campus with him. He passed away in an accident not long after the first Fast movie came out. I totally get what the author is saying about some cars being time machines/memory capsules.
Love my Model Y. Looks boring, tons of stuff can be packed and still comparable acceleration to not that old BMW M3. And no smell and no noise. Fantastic car.
Too bad the handling is shit. It's too heavy. This is why I kept my motorcycle for when I want to have fun on the road.
I'm past mid life, but my fall back cars to my youth have been convertibles. The last round being SLK's.
You had me at All-wheel drive
I wish everyone complaining about other people’s choices here were forced to also post the make/model of the very boring cars the commenter drives. People complaining about others mods are doing it out of insecurity… do you point out loud clothes and styling choices of your coworkers too?
Loud clothes don't roll up in front of my house around midnight with a giant bass thumping for 10 minutes while they pick up or drop off whoever.
Or sit next to me at a redlight drowning out my radio and vibrating my lungs.
> do you point out loud clothes and styling choices of your coworkers too?
If the answer is “no”, will you admit that people complaining about noise are, in fact, complaining because of the noise?
I agree with those comments and my vehicles are a 1990 Mazda Miata that I fixed up[1] & and Model 3 Performance. The Model 3 looks boring, but is ridiculously fast. The Miata has the stock engine, intake, & exhaust, so it's not loud. It's not fast, but it's very fun to drive.
I don't care about loud clothes because they don't wake me or my family up at night, or interrupt a conversation during a walk, or hurt my ears while I'm waiting to cross the street.
1. https://geoff.greer.fm/miata/
Things are posted to HN to be discussed and opined on. For some reason somebody's objectively entry level and subjectively tastless car mods were posted here, and people are expressing their opinions.
And, to wit: 1987 Nissan Be1 2011 Nissan Frontier Pro4x 2014 BMW i3 REX 2020 BMW M2 Competition
All with manual transmissions, with the exception of the direct-drive one.
I used to love cars but the roads are too crowded now for sports cars, between other drivers and cops and cameras you’re guaranteed to have a bad time. These days I’m all about utility for my vehicle (plus e-bike for the thrill). I do miss the stick shift sometimes though.
My midlife crisis car would probably be a land cruiser. No need to go fast. Space and chill is best.
A 3 cylinder Corolla, regardless of how fast, is just people transportation at best and in the worst inefficient way possible. A normal base 23k usd Corolla , not saying anything against the car mechanically it is a great machine for what it is.
Just, overkill. Can’t go fast, need to have higher insurance, it’s more at risk for theft, and it’s not easily replaceable as compared to a 23k corolla.
I did enjoy the Vietnamese part and history of fast and the furious. It’s been a good minute since I’ve seen the first one.
The GR Corolla isn't really the same as a Corolla. Different engine, drivetrain, brakes, wheels, exterior, interior, suspension, and more, all built to be a sports car.
It's also very highly acclaimed for being fun to drive, comparable with the other fast hatchbacks (Golf R, Honda Civic Type R, etc), and is pretty fast.
Most people getting a GR Corolla aren't getting it only as a point A to point B car. So your point about it basically just being people transportation is mostly moot.
It's also really completely different from a standard Corolla.
it would be such a blessing to America if the cool-midlife-crisis-move went back to sports cars and got more of those SUV urban assault vehicles off the road
This was a great article. As for movies, be the change you want to see. For example,
Fish, Prawn, Crab is an indie Asian American movie in development.
I think people are missing the point: the loudness and ostentatiousness is seen as a celebration of Asian American identity by the author. In Denver there is a similar culture surrounding low-riders and the Latino community on Federal St. Both are a celebration of minority cultures in America.
Judging these car sub-cultures divorced from their communal aspects, or as an expression of mainstream American masculinity is pretty off-base IMO.
Fun to drive?
Translation: reckless driver.
Thanks for endangering us.
Then again my age 50 midlife crisis was spent hooking up with 23 year olds on Feeld and FetLife.
Damn a GR Corolla is one of my dream cars. Super cool!
My midlife crisis is also cars. I'm in the process of searching for an honest to god mechanic's shop to buy under an LLC just so I have a better place to work on cars than my garage. I have a list of 8 cars I want to own and restomod, all of which probably nobody else cares about, and that's completely fine. There are some vehicles that just speak to my soul, and I want to experience the best possible iteration of that.
I've spent years on track, now I'm much more interested in the experience of daily driving. A car does not need to be a full track build to be fun. My mantra now is much more OEM+, you have to almost squint to realize its not bone stock. The coolest car to me is something that's well-maintained and shows care and love from its owner, not necessarily something loud and flashy. I think the GR Corolla is an excellent platform to build around, and I almost bought one myself although my current newer daily is a Mazda 3 Turbo. Hot hatches and wagons will always hold a special place in my heart.
That said, I have no desire for a particularly loud exhaust, although I'm more than happy to trade off NVH for actual performance.
Anyone who modifies their car to "sound like a fire breathing dragon" is a mouth breathing loser.
A few burned out - a high compression turbo charged 1.3L 3 cylinder engine is not a good idea.
VW has one on their Polo GTI but it is the iconic 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder TSI engine (EA888) - the normal Polo has 1L turbo charged 3 cylinder but even they did not try high boost.
I drove an i3 (Tiny sporty electric BMW) for a while, and it really changed how I see this kind of thing. The noise your car makes .. is wasted energy. You are blaring and bragging about your inefficiencies. That tiny i3 will out-accelerate you at every light, and you will be making a ton of noise, while it is nearly silent.
Car people seem to have got 'louder' and 'stronger' correlated in their heads, but they are NOT.
I have an i3 and a 2020 M2 Competition with a 6 speed manual. I assure you the i3 is not faster, and attempting to describe either one as a "better car" is ridiculous because the overlap in their goals and design ethos is two completely separate circles on a Venn diagram, with a little overlap that says "has four wheels". Both excellent cars, neither a substitute for the other whatsoever.
Writing a high brow essay about the ingenuity and hard work of import car culture while driving a modern Corolla iM and paying a mechanic to install a cold air intake. Lol.
Pinnacle of modern internet car guy is cosplaying as a F&F tuner while paying for a Reddit-approved aesthetic via catalogue and never dreaming of driving hard harder than a spirited on-ramp pull.
Self describing a basically stock corolla as a sleeper, just lol. Cargo cultism.
That is not a modern Corolla iM. The iM had about 130hp. The GR has 300. The iM had comfortable, "sensible Corolla" suspension. The GR has race suspension.
This is not a "basically stock" corolla. It's actually a really cool car with a fun story behind its design. Toyota's then-CEO Akio Toyoda is a big car nerd and an accomplished race car driver. The GR Corolla was his dream car. He was directly involved in the design and development of the car, and personally took the prototypes to the track for test drives to provide feedback to the engineering team.
It's ok that this is not your thing, but please do not be condescending towards other people's hobbies.
That's a whole lot of words to say "Corrola with a bigger turbo and a hard durometer poly bushing kit".
They should not have called it a Corolla at all. It's nothing like a Corolla.
> Corrola
Corolla.
And I suspect Toyota put a little more effort than that into the GR.
> "Now from the rear it looks like four black bazookas are hidden below the bumper and on start-up it sounds like a fire-breathing dragon"
Ah yes, the "everybody in a 3 mile radius must know how much I spent on my exhaust"-mobile
I'm sure the author is a nice guy, but there's nothing I find more obnoxious than someone driving down a quiet neighbor with a vehicle they've modified to be intentionally loud.
In an alternate universe the cannonball runners, with their cars silent, unassuming, but blazingly fast won over the car modding scene
A GR Corolla goes 0-60 in 4.9 - 5.4sec.
My unexotic stock electric does 0-60 in around 4.8sec, +/-.
So the same performance that requires a stupid amount of wasted energy as heat and noise can be had from stock electric, with a couple hundred ms leftover. Do you care about performance, or do you just want to just fart out a bunch of noise?
I get traditional car culture, but electrics embody the "money talks, wealth whispers" truism.
Your "unexotic stock electric" is boring as shit to drive and corners like a boat. Stomping on the throttle and going very fast in a straight line is a big marketing point for modern EVs with an excess of power (and usually weight), but there's a reason the concept of a "driver's car" exists, and if you think it's just about making noise then you really, really, really don't understand why people buy them.
By the way, the stock Corolla GR can pull right around .95 G, just like the Model Y Performance...
Who cares? Static skidpad performance has very little to do with how engaging a car is to drive, and engagement is what somebody buying a GRC (or a GR86, or a Miata, etc.) is looking for.
One is an objective measurement, the other is a completely subjective judgement.
As they say, there's no accounting for taste...
I mean, engagement aside, you are really just showing your ignorance here if you think skid pad max G is a useful metric to capture real world cornering performance except in extremely broad strokes.
If you want an objective measurement that will usefully speak to how these cars feel to drive vs. each other, check out how much they weigh!
I also have an EV, probably the same one as the grandparent...a Tesla Model Y Dual Motor Long Range. It's rated at 0-60 in 4.8s. It also has good handling, with very little body lean through curves, and a lateral G force of around .85 G.
If I switched to the same tires as the Performance version, that would increase to .95 G. That is better than many legacy sports cars.
Those who love engine noise are the modern equivalent of those who, shortly after cars became mass-market, wanted them to include buggy whips. ;-)
More spec sheet flexing, more assumptions that for owners of internal combustion sports cars it's all about the noise. More projection. Another person who just doesn't get it.
I'm sorry to be harsh in this thread, but it's always odd to find these weird empathetic blind spots in people.
The article literally brags about how loud the car is (and makes it sound likr it was modified to be louder?) so it seems like a reasonable point to take issue with.
Fortunately or unfortunately, driving a car is a public activity and even as a hobby, other people are going to be exposed to it in a way that you just don't get from, say, building model boats out of toothpicks.
I'm a big fan of people having hobbies and enjoying them, but we live in a dense and crowded world where stuff like a loud car can negatively affect literally hundreds of other people.
The comments I've replied to in this subthread have nothing to do with the aftermarket exhaust issue. It's just people who've never driven a real sports car (at any price point) posting numbers from the Tesla spec sheets.
You're absolutely wrong on both points in my case.
I've driven many "real sports cars", and I'm not not just "posting numbers from the Tesla spec sheets", my Model Y is my daily driver.
Ironically, you're the one "projecting".
> I'm not not just "posting numbers from the Tesla spec sheets", my Model Y is my daily driver.
Yeah? You measure those 0-60 and max g numbers yourself?
less than 1g is pitiful tbh. I’m no pro but have maxed out the meter on my wee sports car >1g front, left and right. it can only muster 0.5g accel so it’s worse than a tesla, am I right? having put in some serious miles on a model 3, those electrics are in another league — below
this car is about handling in the twisties, not on straigh line.
if you care about performance, you should know that its not only momentary performance what matters, but sustaining it and on repeated occasions. this car is made to be driven hard in a circuit or mountain roads. a electric car overheats its battery and its brakes due to their weight.
the thing most close to electric sport car must be the ionic 5n. the rest is just old people saying "hey look how fast i can launch this car on the highway"
ps: most car people dont care about performance, but about the thrill and the emotion of driving
This guy's car may be designed to be driven hard in a circuit or mountain roads, but that ain't what this guy is doing:
> Now when I hit a loopy freeway interchange at night and my GR Corolla carves through the turn, it’s 1996 and I’m cruising in my CRX, getting pho in San Gabriel or rushing to a flyer party at Naga in Long Beach.
So doing the famous LA Stop-and-Go Freeway Circuit.
> We published our own magazines, built our own businesses, and for good and bad, promoted our own outlaw street racer image and our own beauty standard.
Or hitting the 4-way-intersection midnight drift curves.
Lets be honest, most people who drive these kinds of cars drive as many circuits as the average F-150 owner drives on western canyon dirt tracks.
Some do, sure, and if you do that, great, get the best tool for your job. But most people only daydream about these things and simply want the image as an escape from the existential meaningless of their suburban lives (is the op's "midlife crisis" title snark or an actual cry for meaning?)
I'm not gonna prevent people from spending their money on their hobbies, do whatever floats your boat. But if your hobbies are really just reving a loud engine from one strip mall red light to the next red light 1/4 mile down the road, well, that's not the thrill and the emotion of driving, that's a desperate display of loneliness and disconnection.
This is very funny when talking about the GR Corolla specifically because it is notorious for overheating its AWD system after more than a handful of laps of a racetrack.
I've yet to have any issues with the battery overheating, and most if not all of the braking is regenerative (no brake pad wear).
the first time I drove a model 3 I felt like I couldn't stop. it's on par with my 80s van that has drum brakes on the rear. the brakes just aren't good enough for sport, the car weighs too much. if this is hard to understand, you're living in a different world from motorsports enthusiasts
> Do you care about performance, or do you just want to just fart out a bunch of noise?
WTF are you talking about? MREs will give you your daily nutrition, can be cheaper than actual meals, and definitely wins points against meals, but I don't see puritannical arguments about "Why do you need a real carrot anyway? Taste is overrated" everywhere.
> I get traditional car culture, but electrics embody the "money talks, wealth whispers" truism.
Sorry, wrong. It's basically lack of taste.
You make this comment as if this exact argument didn't happen 6 times in the past decade when talking about Huel and Soylent
Just like my neighbors with Harleys that drunk drive home at 2a revving the engine.
There is nothing like the rage I feel when a car/motorcycle is moving 5mph in heavy traffic doing nothing but revving the engine nonstop.
My car has a 3.5L V6 and is almost silent. The only reason to fit one of those exhausts is to be an arsehole to everyone around you.
My midlife crisis car is same price, much faster, more comfortable, and doesn’t wake the neighborhood when I drive it.
If you must relive the nostalgic, early 1900s technology of generating motion by rattling metal pistons with gasoline instead of steam then why not open Autotrader and buy any one of the Supras, 300ZX, 3000GTs, or other great 90s tuner cars that can be had for the same $50k as this 1.6 liter leaf blower. Shit, there’s a convertible 300ZX for $20k and now you’ve got $30k for mods.
If it isn't a blatant cry for attention can it really be considered a midlife crisis car?
I mean, if this isn't the place to share this video, I'm not sure where IS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLJETZyfb7I
I had a coworker who one day showed up to work, pointed out the window and said look I bought a midlife crisis car very matter-of-factly, and I will never understand this. You don't need to do anything, nobody is making you do this.
> You don't need to do anything, nobody is making you do this.
Hey, you just figured out the entire point of buying a mid-life crisis car!
It's a joke to begin with, but if you are actually curious: One day you wake up and realize you're getting older, you can't take the money with you, and that "dream car" from your teens you always wanted to own is suddenly very much in reach.
It's now or never. May as well enjoy it for a few years until the novelty wears off.
I'm not really a car guy, but I grabbed my midlife crisis car last summer because it was the last model year they are going to make it. It gives me joy every time I drive it, even though no one has a clue what it is as it's rather boring looking.
Once I no longer gain joy from driving it, I will sell it and move back to something practical and economical again.
It's not for anyone else, it's for me. For a lot of men around that point in life this is an important mental switch. At least that's how I personally see it, others will have their own reasons!
Probably just joking around, not serious. I said the same thing when I bought my Camaro years ago. The only better choice would have been a Corvette. If you are 40+, every second comment will have some form of mid-life crisis slant to it, so you just run with it as the joke.
But the truth is that many of us have been buying such irresponsible sports cars for our entire lives, it didn't start in mid-life ;-)
I almost ... almost bought a hat with a fake mullet sewn in just for when I was driving the Camaro, all for the lulz. Some people don't take themselves too seriously, and I'm definitely in that camp.
I've wanted a Porsche my entire life. Doesn't have to be a track monster - actually, I'd prefer a lower-powered one. I want the handling of a Boxster, but a truly fast car is only fun on the track.
When I was young, I couldn't justify the cost. Now that I'm a bit older I could afford it, but I can't spare the time for a hobby. With kids still in child seats, I had to stick with a practical car.
When I'm 50? The kids will be old enough to sit up front. I probably still won't have a lot of time for a hobby, but I do have money now.
Buying a midlife crisis car doesn't mean that you feel it's a rite of passage. It doesn't mean someone felt like they had to. It might just mean that for the entire first half of their lives, there has always been a reason to /not/ buy the expensive toy they wanted. They finally treated themselves.
> I want the handling of a Boxster, but a truly fast car is only fun on the track.
This is so true. A while back I had a sixth generation Camaro SS 1LE. The handling was sublime. Think 1.5 scale Miata. Cornered on rails, begged to be driven faster, faster. And 455hp on tap, it was definitely no slouch. But when I took it out to the rural twisty roads for some fun, I found that I would be entering corners at 80+ mph if I wanted to make it do any work. That is categorically a bad idea in all regards, there is so much energy in play at that speed that one unexpected patch of gravel can end your existence. Loved the car, but to drive it safely meant never going past 2/10 of it's ability except on track days.
As compared to (much longer ago) a 2.5RS that I had back when they were cool (pre-WRX days in the US) and you could fling that thing around with no regards to propriety, and it was fun because it didn't have much power, didn't have that much actual capability, but it was relatively light and very communicative. Much better choice if you're not going for track days.
I guess what I don't get is the part where you broadcast that it's a midlife crisis. If I bought a super expensive computer or house or vacation I wouldn't walk into the office and announce I've had a midlife crisis. Maybe I'm being too literal, lol
> I guess what I don't get is the part where you broadcast that it's a midlife crisis
A number of my friends have said this as a joke (the kind of joke someone finds funny when they have a stable job, stable marriage, and a couple of kids, I guess)
A few others have definitely not been joking, and hey, if the red sportscar and chasing women half your age lets you momentarily forget about how much you hate your job, your mortgage, and your ex-wife... I can't really find fault with that?
Give it time.
I'd imagine that it's them doing something they earnestly want to do, but trying to lampshade something that they believe people will perceive of them or be judgmental about. Like most self-deprecating humor, people often want to signal that they're 'in' on their behaviors and not completely unaware of how they're perceived.
I loved driving a sportbike with a tune and an unrestricted racing exhaust, if I revved it just right I could make it backfire directly into your rolled down window
This is a genuine question and not intended as an insult: do you have a personality disorder?
Eh, you ride a bike long enough and you're more or less forced into this level of hostility toward the drivers around you.
Maybe a bicycle. If you ride a bike long enough on US roads - you probably have a death wish.
Given the gun ownership rates, I wouldn't be surprised if someone gets shot for doing obnoxious shit in a road rage incident.
Cute, but you haven't really lived until you've ripped an apocalyptic burnout in front of the dude that's been tailgating you for the last N miles. Trading ~1k worth of tire wear for coating the front of their car with rock chips and molten asphalt is a damn good deal.
$1K? And I thought my tires were expensive, damn...