English 
The Corvette C7 has four tailpipes
With trucks, sometimes the silencer is crossways under the front of the cab and its tailpipe blows sideways to the offside (right side if driving on the left, left side if driving on the right). The side of a passenger car on which the exhaust exits beneath the rear bumper usually indicates the market for which the vehicle was designed, i.e. Japanese (and some older British) vehicles have exhausts on the right so they are furthest from the curb in countries which drive on the left, while European vehicles have exhausts on the left.
The end of the final length of exhaust pipe where it vents to open air, generally the only visible part of the exhaust system part on a vehicle, often ends with just a straight or angled cut, but may include a fancy tip. The tip is sometimes chromed. It is often of larger pipe than the rest of the exhaust system. This produces a final reduction in pressure, and sometimes used to enhance the appearance of the car.
In the late 1950s in the United States manufacturers had a fashion in car styling to form the rear bumper with a hole at each end through which the exhaust would pass. Two outlets symbolized V-8 power, and only the most expensive cars (Cadillac, Lincoln, Imperial, and Packard) were fitted with this design. One justification for this was that luxury cars in those days had such a long rear overhang that the exhaust pipe scraped the ground when the car traversed ramps. The fashion disappeared after customers noted that the rear end of the car, being a low-pressure area, collected soot from the exhaust and its acidic content ate into the chrome-plated rear bumper.
When a bus, truck or tractor or excavator has a vertical exhaust pipe (called stacks or pipes behind the cab), sometimes the end is curved, or has a hinged cover flap which the gas flow blows out of the way, to try to prevent foreign objects (including droppings from a bird perching on the exhaust pipe when the vehicle is not being used) getting inside the exhaust pipe.]
In some trucks, when the silencer (muffler) is front-to-back under the chassis, the end of the tailpipe turns 90° and blows downwards. That protects anyone near a stationary truck from getting a direct blast of the exhaust gas, but often raises dust when the truck is driving on a dry dusty unmade surface such as on a building site.
A consequence of the problematic nature in adaptation of large diameter exhaust tubing to the undercarriage of ladder-frame or body-on-frame chassis architecture vehicles with altered geometry suspensions, lake pipes evolved to become a front-engine vehicle exhaust archetype crafted by specialty motor sport engine specialists of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, whose preoccupation was optimization of the acoustic effect associated with high output internal combustion engines. The name is derived from their use on the vast, empty dry lake beds northeast of Los Angeles County, where engine specialists of yore custom crafted, interchanged and evaluated one-piece header manifolds of various mil thicknesses, a function of temperature, humidity, elevation and climate they anticipated.
No intrinsic performance gain to be derived, per se, lake pipes evolved a function of practicality. Common instances, their manifolds routed straight out the front wheel-wheels posing an asphyxiation axiom to the race driver, "lake pipes" were fashioned, extending from the header flange along the rocker panels, bottom-side of the vehicle, beneath the doors, thus allowing (1) suspension tuners a lower ride height sufficient for land speed record attempts, and (2) engine tuners ease and flexibility of interchanging different exhaust manifolds without hoisting the vehicle, thus precluding having to wrench undercarriage of the vehicle.
Body-on-frame chassis architecture ceding to superleggera, unit-body and monologue archetypes, in tandem with smog abatement legislation rendered lake pipes, as a bona fide performance prerequisite, obsolete. No meaningful performance gain to be had for contemporary vehicles, lake pipes persist into the 21st century as a superfluous, retrograde aesthetic, usually chrome plated with various options, allowing the driver to control whether exhaust gas is routed the standard exhaust system, or through lake pipes, which are commonly fashioned by lacer caps which, affixed by fasteners at the terminal end of exhaust tips, serve to (1) "cap" the exhaust system when not in use, and/or (2) signal authorities that the presence of lake pipes is merely cosmetic.
