If I had the cash, I’d go for a Morris Minor as a second car. Looks good, no road tax, makes a farting noise when changing from first to second.

For years. the auto industry has been struggling to make cars as quite as possible, now they want to make them loud again?

When a normal car is slowing down on overrun these days, you are more likely to hear its tyres and wind noise before you hear the motor, so how is that different ot an electric car? When my car acclerates, it sounds pretty loud, but cruising or slowing down at city speeds and you can't hear the engine over the tyre noise...

We don't need louder cars, we need more aware guide dogs.

And people who aren't blind need to learn to look before they step out into the road.

This "can't do without sound nonsense" - people already do, people walk around with their headphones in. People even drive with them in!

Exactly. I mean how many people overtake without looking? Half the time the radio/music drowns out the sound of other cars until they're right up your chuff.

I used to drive a smart car and I loved it.

It belonged to my dads company and had company logos on the panels. He had also paid to have it upgraded so it had a Janspeed twin exhaust, racing chip and a dump valve on the turbo

It was ridiculous and could easily overtake on the motorway but would still do over 50+mpg on average.

In fact...

::goes off to look at prices::

And that's why you need a big shouty car that people'll notice and thus not be run over by...

I won't shed a tear for someone run over because of stupidity. There's EU regulations stopping cars being too loud.

What are we going to have in the UK? Cars that go along repeatedly saying "Excuse me, coming through. Excuse me, coming through..."?

Once I get round to fitting a downpipe, my car should be a lot louder, not to mention faster.

I live near a bypass and apart from motorbikes, it's the tyres you hear, not the engine. I would say that the problem grows as the speeds get lower. That said, they already have electric trams in cities that are pretty silent and can cause a bit of a nasty shock.

Got a link to those regs? Cos I don't see how the likes of Ferrari or Lamborghini can possibly be the right side of them, unless their definition of 'too loud' is frankly awesome.
The MOT requirement is simply worded as "assess subjectively the effectiveness of the silencer in reducing exhaust noise to a level considered to be average for the vehicle".

6 February 1970 - so before I was even born.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/Lex ... 57:EN:HTML

Reads like mumbo-jumbo to me. Can anyone translate into Human? I speak several Earth and alien languages, but not very good at "legal [LIFTED]".

It kinda makes sense to me, but there's nothing giving a figure.
"I. PERMISSIBLE SOUND LEVELS I.1. Limits
The sound level of the vehicles referred to in Article 1 of this Directive, when measured under the conditions set out in this Annex, may not exceed the following levels: >PIC FILE= "T0002112">"

So I'm guessing there's a graphic somewhere that'd answer that.

That was my problem. Something like "80dBA at 1 meter is too damned loud for a vehicle doing 30mph or under" would just be too simple...

Well, most of that document deals with a standardised method of assessing the vehicles noise, rather than "Your chavvy neighbour with the Saxo with the pointlessly large exhaust is officially too loud if it's 90dB at 25mph from a distance of 1.5 metres."