Boredom thread, factory exhaust, missed opportunity

Was thinking...(insert joke here)....seems like the factory, all factories, sort of missed an easy opportunity to exploit the possibilities of exhaust systems, mainly mufflers, back in the day.

If you exclude different exhaust tips, and talk about dual exhaust systems, there were very few differences in the systems in most cars. The AAR T/A cars were a big exception, as was the LRE......but beyond that.....

Why not build the Road Runner and Super Bees with Mufflers that we’re still noise compliant, but just a bit louder to appeal to the youth crowd. Ditto for the chargers, and maybe even the E bodies.
Maybe some factory headers on a model or two? Maybe even re-rate the HP and up it 5 hp in a case of two.

Just seems like exhaust systems didn’t get much attention.

I’m bored.

Maybe headers cost more to make vs a cast manifold and that is why they didn't go there?

The max wedge cars had cast iron headers, which took a lot to work to make.

Did Mr. Norm offer his cars with headers if you checked that box off?

I think the Shelby GT350 Mustangs came with factory tri-y headers.

I always wondered why they built Chargers and many other Mopars with the capacity for much larger tires in the rear, but they only came stock w skinnys. Same reason I guess they figured if you wanted to change these things its easy enough....

I think headers were considered a maintenance/warranty problem and avoided for that reason, but man......what if? Yeah the max wedge cars were a different animal.
I mean, they go to the trouble to make a big marketing deal out of a beep-beep horn for the RR, why not market a car or two that really growled? Keep it out of California of course.

D/Darts had headers.

Chrysler actually put some time into getting the exhaust note that they wanted. As I understand it, the 273 four barrel single exhaust was engineered by an audio engineer.

I always thought the valved exhaust system on a very small number of '70 GTO's was interesting. More so now that valved mufflers are commonplace in performance cars.

Excellent marketing of an exhaust system! For the little money involved in tweaking an exhaust for the performance crowd, the payoff had to be there, but so few OEMs took advantage. Lost opportunity.

A growling exhaust ? ... I’d say FCA has done a real decent job with the ScatCat !

The issue with "The Humbler" was the fact that you have to take into consideration the time period. Sure, they could've built it out of stainless steel, but nobody would've paid $895 for what amounted to "a toy". Price was a big consideration, so they made it out of regular steel - I don't even think mufflers were aluminized back then, either! Secondly: Warranty. The reason the option was recalled and then deleted was that most of them rusted up and stopped working costing GM a lot of headaches and money. Internally, it was a controversial option among management, so add in warranty issues and Uncle Sam sticking his nose in the automotive business, you can start to see why it never caught on. I'm pretty certain that by 1970 even California had noise laws. Lots of the Hi-Perf cars destined for CA had mandatory turn-downs.

I worked in the exhaust lab at Chrysler for 35 years.. warranty was always a issue on the production
cars.. if the factory had a tube header on it that would have been for HP or racing.. I built a ton of
headers when I worked in the lab.. I still build my own headers.. but they are for a one off only..
even on max wedge stuff was for production but HP.. that was part of the reason for cast

Well, I don't know about you, but I thought Mopars had some GREAT sounding exhausts back in the day - especially the Cudas & R/T Challengers. The T/A Challengers & AAR's did not sound that good - very restrictive mufflers. This being said however, the E-body perf. models had CRAPPY flowing exhausts & lost some significant HP through them I believe. 440 & Hemis should have had dual 3" exhaust with good mufflers, but they probably would have been too loud for factory expectations. On the E-bodies, the outlet of the rear mufflers were under 2" diameter, plus the systems were 2.25", & inner cores of the resonators & rear mufflers were probably 2" or even smaller. NOW, if you pay attention to your exhaust, you can get a very good flowing system. I wish I would have known this back when I had my 71 Hemi Charger.

On the Ford side, the '69 Shelbys I thought had GREAT sounding exhaust & very unique tone through the single rear transverse muffler. Dual exhaust through a single oval muffler - although I have no idea how well the OE ones flowed. They sure sounded cool though.