When I bought my Rabbit GTIs a few years ago, the seller was telling me about the full Techtonics exhaust that he'd just had professionally installed. I thought "cool, Techtonics is a well known brand in the VW world, so that's a bonus".
It turned out to be a collection of pre-bent slip-fit pipe sections bound together with band clamps. The "muffler" and resonator were off-the-shelf Flowmaster cans. 2" stem to stern. At first, I though that he was fibbing, but it turns out that is what Techtonics sells.
It was the single loudest car that I've even owned, including the time that I broke the exhaust off my M10 318i at the cat, but it had a tone that made me grin even when it was idling. Some of that wonderful sound was from the worked over engine (ported this, oversized that, decked the other).
Normally I prefer less loud, but it looked scary and ran like a scalded dog, so the loudness seemed natural.
As I said before, beauty is in the ear of the beholder. It's your car, make it sound however makes you happy. That's why we spend far more than they're worth keeping them on the road.
Personally, if you could post a soundbite, I'd like to hear it. I have sound bites of most of the cars that I've owned, and dozens of others that I found on the net. I load them onto my mp3 player as a separate tracklist and let them loop.
Neil
