Does the shape of the tip of your exhaust do anything?

[paperbackwriter]

This morning I was parked next to the lot of an Acura dealer looking at the rear ends of five different current Acura models. Only one of them had “normal” tailpipes with a circular cross-section. The other four had tailpipes with either rounded parrellogram or oval cross-sections. Even these models, however, has some sort of plastic (nylon?) insert in the tailpipe that reduced the actual space available to the escaping exhaust gases down to a circular cross-section.

I infer from this that the other shapes either have some sort of detrimental practical effect that Acura alleviates with the insert, or that Acura made the tailpipes non-circular for cosmetic reasons only. This leaves open the possibility that there is potentially a practical benefit to non-circular tailpipes, but Acura didn’t invest in designing such but just went for the cosmetic simulation of functional non-circular tailpipes.

So: are non-circular tailpipes purely cosmetic or not?
And yes, despite referring to Acura as the manufacturer, I know these are really made by Honda.

[dmatsch]

Yes. Purely cosmetic. They’re just tips. If you look under the rear of the car, you’ll see the true size of the exhaust.

The only place exhaust tips have any actual purpose (albeit only to annoy) is on those noisy rice burners that fly down your street at 2am.

[Dog80]

IS IT THE REAL EXHAUST? FAKE EXHAUST PIPE / TIP

This was the most publicized example of exhaust pipe fake-ness. The quad pipes, dual stacked, looked great from a distance. And the IS-F has the capabilities to deserve some man-tastic exhaust. But, Lexus, in a blatant cost-cutting and looks-enhancing measure, didn’t even connect the pipes. The chromed oval tips are just sitting in the bumper, empty as Paris Hilton’s head.

[Chefguy]

@dmatsch

Yes. Purely cosmetic. They’re just tips. If you look under the rear of the car, you’ll see the true size of the exhaust.

The only place exhaust tips have any actual purpose (albeit only to annoy) is on those noisy rice burners that fly down your street at 2am.

Those are probably resonators, not just tail pieces.