Republished with permission from the April 2015 issue of Fourteener Motoring Magazine

None of the above. They all have the same size tubes. Even though the 1.7 and 1.8 liter exchangers have a kick-up in the back, it doesn’t hurt performance.

Someone once told me a story that they used to race their wife around town and she always beat him from red light to red light. He couldn’t figure out why she always won. Finally, he thought maybe it was the fact that she had the straight (i.e., 2.0 liter) heat exchangers. What else could it be, he thought? The engines were the same. So one day he switched them on their cars. He took the straight pipes. The next time they were racing around, she still beat him. There must have been something else at work here.