Meep-meep is too meek

After seeing my car through two years, two fender-benders, one collision with a pole that came out of nowhere, one flat tire, one missing hubcap and several run-ins with curbs during botched parallel parking attempts, I have only one complaint. It needs a louder horn.

I know that this is car-buying time for marked-down 2007 models, or at least car-ogling time at this week’s L.A. Auto Show, and that the typical wish list is usually a little more ambitious. But I drive a 2006 Toyota Corolla, one of those rare cars that can still squeeze into the increasingly useless parking spaces marked “compact.” Happy as I am to fit in, I am envious of the one option not available to me but standard to Hummers, Escalades and even Accords and Camrys.

Those vehicles come with loud, deep-throated horns. I know because I hear the honks, usually when I’m west of La Cienega or in tonier parts of Silver Lake. Sometimes they are even aimed at at my innocent Corolla as it tries to change lanes, as it patiently waits for a slow, elderly pedestrian or as it lingers for mere milliseconds when a traffic light turns green. I always hear the big, booming honk behind me, or next to me, from a car that looks as if it wants to eat my poor Corolla.

Now, what if I am idling in rush hour behind some monstrosity and, after craning my neck around its bulk or peering through its darkened windows to see whether the light did in fact turn green, I want to honk? Even if I slam my Corolla’s horn, it still sounds like the meep-meep of the Road Runner when he outwits Wile E. Coyote.

Meep-meep is not enough to ward off big cars out for blood on the 10 Freeway. Meep-meep doesn’t adequately convey the emotion -- fear, anger or, sometimes, sheer resignation -- that honks should convey. Meep-meep won’t cut through practically soundproofed interiors or 17-speaker sound systems with subwoofers. Meep-meep will certainly not put the fear of God, or at least fear of my Corolla, in the heart of a Hummer driver who undoubtedly suffers from a Napoleon complex.

I know I chose to drive a small car, at least in the sense that I “chose” a career path other than rapping or being Paris Hilton. I know I chose to drive a car that, were it to come into swift contact with an SUV, would crumple like this newspaper when you’re done reading it. But that only makes it all the more important to equip little cars like mine with big, deep horns that make them, if not more visible, at least quite audible. At this point, I would settle for a manufacturer-installed horn that played the first few bars of “La Cucaracha.”

-- Swati Pandey