I was probably not adding to the quality of life, but I used to really enjoy driving around downtown Manhattan at night. FWIW, there were few signs of life down there after 10pm.
For car nuts living in the city, it's a bit of a thing you do.
I live in Boston, and I'm fairly certain that the local Porsche dealership is catering to potential customers with very early morning test drives on Storrow Drive with demo cars. During the summer months I almost lose count of the number of 911s I encounter at 2AM (with a driver and a passenger, almost always both male) with window stickers on them, carving through the elevation changes and off-camber corners well beyond the speed limit. Last year it was so frequent I just got over to the rightmost lane whenever I would hear a wailing flat-six approaching.
