I've been through this twice. My first IS I had a standard exhaust with a leaky cat, so it sounded like dog doodoo anyway. I went to the muffler shop and got a Flowmaster (I believe it was 40 series) installed and a high flow cat cut installed. I'm with E30 318is on this.
I CAN'T STAND when my exhaust is compared to a civic's. On the above example, it was a tiny bit more throaty, but LOUD AS HADES. I'm kinda glad i wrecked that one. On my current project it came with a high flow muffler (I beleive it might be ANSA, I'm not exactly sure though) and stock cat. My mechanic did something for me and looked over the car, said my cat is stopping up. His recommendation was that since it's OBD1, cut the cat off and straight pipe it.
Here's a thought... I saw a company named Tanaka I beleive, or maybe it was Greddy and the exhaust series was Tanaka... anyway, they made a stock sounding exhaust, but had high flow muffler number increases... that's what I'm probably going to try to get next... I'm taking my cat off next week and putting on a resonator in place.
I know it's against the grain in the modding world, but I like a sleeper sound.
