For a "slow" economy car, I thought my previous 2010 Civic Si sounded pretty damn good stock. I miss the banshee wail of the engine at high rpms as well as the exhaust note.
My current stock GTI sounds much too muted for my taste. It's so quiet that the VW engineers used some kind of fake soundbox with amplifier in the engine bay they call a "Soundaktor". Even if I don't end up getting an ECU tune and getting a downpipe, I might still get an intake and catback exhaust and unplug the Soundaktor. Even then, the 2.0T engine supposedly doesn't sound great.
