Has the recent tailpipe trend gone too far?

Perhaps it’s because I live in London and tend to sit in interminable traffic jams, but I can’t help but notice things about the other cars that are surrounding me in the gridlock (that’s been made worse by the day by random road closures to create what are known as Low Traffic Neighbourhoods). Yes, some roads are now mercifully free of traffic, but those surrounding these areas are ever more crowded.

Inevitably while sitting stationary one’s eyes are drawn to the cars around you. My first point of call is tyres – I love looking to see who’s put their trust in some Badabing Ditchfinders and make a mental note to give them a wide berth on the off chance the traffic starts to move. Next up is a glance at the exhausts around me – there’s so much talk about emissions and particulates these days that you can’t help but glance at the pipes delivering these noxious fumes.

And I have to say that exhausts these days have got far too fancy for their own good. Except the vast majority of them aren’t actually exhausts, are they? Simply fake exhaust-shaped outlets through which you can often see the actual pea-shooter exhaust doing its best to hide out of sight. I’ve not got to the bottom of the reason behind this current ghastly trend but I’m almost certain it’s because it must be cheaper for manufacturers to do it like this – I mean, it can’t be because they look good! Couldn’t we just go back to the good old days when you could tell, more or less, where a car sat in any given range thanks to the size and number of exhausts it had.

Back in my dealership days it was pretty easy to spot what was what with a single pipe for lower-powered models and twin exhaust pipes for something a little more fruity. BMW did muddy the waters a bit with the E39 which in SE guise had no visible exhausts (something that was carried over to the E38 7 Series, too) while the Sport models sported an overly large single pipe. The late 1990s saw the arrival of quad pipes on M cars but even this now trademark fitting wasn’t always that well executed in later years with an ugly exhaust box visibly poking out from under the rear valance.

These days it seems like differentiation between models comes in various guises. Take the latest 3 Series for example. A 318i SE follows tradition by having one single pipe but up that to an M Sport and you get the coveted twin pipes – one on either side of the car. But if you remove the badging this then looks like a 320i M Sport or a 330i M Sport. Maybe they’re different diameters but I’m not wandering around the neighbourhood with a tape measure in my pocket to check. It’s only when you opt for the M Performance models that you get some further differentiation, but then its some of those desperately dodgy looking fake exits. And don’t get me started on the 8 Series – the normal models are saddled with ridiculously oversized fake exhausts and you have to buy an M8 just to get a halfway decent looking set of pipes poking through the rear valance.

But the worst of the worst in recent BMW history must go to the M Performance exhaust for the new M3 and M4. The expected quad pipes are still there but have been rearranged in a centre exit configuration that looks like some sort of demented isosceles trapezoid formation. Never has an exhaust looked so out of place on a BMW.