Does a pickup need a louder horn that a car?
It amazes me what some people think a horn will actually do. They don’t generate any real physical force, guys. You can’t blast someone off the road with your horn. Not much funnier than seeing some clown following another car around, honking on their horn. What do you expect? Bruises?
“Mine’s bigger’n your’s” 
Before you tell any more lies, I’ve been driving for about 45 years. In California.
Peace,
mangeorge
I want a horn that actually says the words, “MOVE YOU FUCKHEAD!!!” That would be cool.
Alternatively, I could have a horn this loud, but with noise cancelling so only my target turned into jello and not me.
Ummm … you’re proud of this??
Julie
This got me thinking - how do car horns actually work? Do they have some kind of electric powered air compresser, or what?
Electric car horns are just fancified buzzers. A driver coil is energized to make the driven coil move. At the end of the stroke the circuit is opened, the driven coil springs back and it cycles again. The driven coil is attached to a diaphram. In little meeper horns, there’s just a grille over the diaphram. The deeper tones come from attaching a coiled-up horn over the diaphram.
The four horns on old Caddies played a diminished 7th chord called the Klaxon Quartet. At one time, all of General Motors’s horns were made at Delco Remy here in Anderson, Indiana. Now they’re probably made in San Lorenzo or some such poor nation.
If you want to make your horn a little more alarming, you can tune many of them. Assuming your car has more than one horn, you can tweak one of them off its intended pitch for a punk-rock feel.
Hey, and whatever happened to horns that played La Cucaracha?
The ones that play tunes are usually the air powered ones that look like a row of little trumpets, all fed by a small compressor. You can still get 'em at big auto parts stores, and of course at J.C. Whitney, the world home of all auto doodads and the home of Winky the Rear-window Cat.
Back to the OP, though, my theory is that it’s the Japanese emphasis on politeness. This is, after all the nation that replaced Gilbert Gottfried’s voice of the AFLAC duck with a politer, less abrasive, voice.
Could we get them to do this to Gilbert Gottfried permanently?
Diceman, your Nova was made by Toyota. AFAIK, it’s essentially a Corolla. I don’t know if you care, but there it is. 
My horn is loud, which I think is fitting because I think my car is pretty big. I have yet to honk at anyone else, though I leaned on the horn once by accident while backing out a spot and spent the next two minutes looking for the person who really did not want me to back out.
I, too, have always assumed that Japanese horns are quieter because their people value quietness and politeness more, I dare say, than Americans.
The EV1 has a special, quieter horn in addition to its regular horn. It was for honking at pedestrians. The electric car was so quiet, people couldn’t hear it coming.
I seem to think my Bonneville 2000 had two horns. When I took it through some really, really deep water once, one of the horns stopped working and the tone was not a nice chord anymore. It was actually kind of nice since locking the doors didn’t make it beep so loud anymore. On my current Continental 2001, I had to turn off that feature since the Ford horn is so damn loud I’m afraid of the chirp pissing off the neighbors.
I had a 2001 Ranger for a bit. Its horn wasn’t very loud, and I didn’t worry about pissing off the neighbors. But being a simpler car, it didn’t chirp when the doors locked unless I hit the keyfob a second time. Like a confirmation chirp. I kind of wish that’s how the Contintal worked.
You might be on to something here.
German cars have a sound that I can only describe as “come beat the shit out of me,” 'cause that’s what I want to do when some one honks one - go beat the shit out of the driver. Which would normally be a good thing here in Germany. Many times, the other driver will honk when there is no need of it - the driver poorly estimates the situation and honks when there is no need of a warning.
Before you blame this on my driving style as opposed to the Germans’ driving styles, I noticed this long before I had a car to drive over here. I’ve seen many an occassion where the fact that someone honked nearly CAUSED an accident, instead of helping to avoid one.
Polite little “meep, meep” for the polite Japanese, authoritative horn for the US, and irritating horn for the Germans. Hmmm. Some how it seems to fit.
Some European-made cars (Fiats and Renaults come to mind) of the '60s and '70s had ‘city’ (meep meep) and country (hurricane blast) horn tones, controlled by a switch on the dashboard. Not sure if any manufacturers still do this, but it seems a reasonable compromise between safety and waking up everyone in an urban neighborhood.
I imagine it would have something to do with the politeness-conscious japanese culture.
This is just my WAG, however.
Hrm, perhaps I should read the entire thread before posting.
In this case, I guess I’ll second whoever said it first.