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.
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.
All to transport one person by themselves from home to office and back.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I wouldn't consider a loud GRC w/ catback a "sleeper" though - it's quite the opposite??
We actually did consider a GR corolla, but ended up getting a used evo x that's been pretty fun instead.
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.
Fish, Prawn, Crab is an indie Asian American movie in development.
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.
Car people seem to have got 'louder' and 'stronger' correlated in their heads, but they are NOT.
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.
Men in midlife crisis: supercharger that no-one can see. You're still immature but hiding it, which is the adult thing to do.
(Yeah I'm saving up for a supercharger)
Given the gun ownership rates, I wouldn't be surprised if someone gets shot for doing obnoxious shit in a road rage incident.
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.
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.
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.
Ah yes, the "everybody in a 3 mile radius must know how much I spent on my exhaust"-mobile
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.
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. ;-)
I'm sorry to be harsh in this thread, but it's always odd to find these weird empathetic blind spots in people.
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
> 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 make judgements on what hobbies to spend your money on, 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.
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.