My car’s loud cause I’m poor and exhaust parts are expensive. It’s stinky inside sometimes too, probably not helping with the IQ thing. Guarantee it bothers me more than it does you
Modified exhausts are way louder than simply broken ones. Maybe 1% of loud cars I see are old and beaten up. In vast majority of cases someone paid extra to install custom exhaust.
I think you must live in a nicer area than I do lol. There’s like two guys with fart cannon Subarus, probably five with straight piped pickups, and uncountable beaters with soup cans/tin foil/hose clamps/rtv/bailing wire doing their best. We have cheap power and everyone wants electric but no one can afford it. There is exactly one Nissan Leaf owned by the school district superintendent. My car was $700 including all the parts to fix it. That’s pretty typical here. Cheapest exhaust I could fit was $800 alone when I looked into it, and almost certainly more now.
Probably difference between USA and Europe. In Europe beat up cars will not pass technical checks. To have a really loud car you have to replace the exhaust for the check and then install the custom one again. Only special kind of drivers have the time and will to do it. Mostly bikers.
That actually probably explains why bikers do it the most since there it seems like on most bikes the swap can be done in less than 30 minutes as the exhaust system is small and self-contained and easily accessible
Motorcyclists also believe a loud exhaust makes them more visible to drivers - to what degree this is true is debatable but sometimes the motivation is not pure malice like with cars.
Sound is annoying but exhaust in general sucks. One thing that was amazing around april or may of 2020 was how clean the air smelt for a brief time.
2021 was a cyclist’s dream. Clean air and no cars
and everyone was instructed to give you at least 10 feet of distance :)
Australia, so 2m, but yeah
We were not allowed out except for a few exceptions, one of which was an hour a day of outdoor exercise
I would commute by bike to my preferred exercise location an hour away, ride for exercise for an hour, then commute by bike home again