I owe it all to Xzibit, you say, nervously looking over your shoulder at Big Dane, who's giving you that Undertaker throat-slashing gesture behind your back. To be fair, one satisfied pimpee-the guy whose car blew up, incidentally-said Pimp My Ride "gave me some confidence. we expect you to be a little more fucking enthusiastic,'" Glazier recalled.Īlso mentioned: candy stuffed in one overweight guy's car to make him appear more gluttonous, producers urging a contestant to dump his girlfriend because it would make for a compelling storyline, workers purposefully damaging pre-pimped rides so that they looked especially busted. "I remember this very clearly, Big Dane, very big dude, he like puts his arm around my shoulder, kind of walks me around the shop for like 10 minutes and he's like, 'Listen, we put a lot of work into this. His first real reaction to the car was just a quiet amazement where he said, "This is good." They immediately yelled "re-do!" And then things got a bit weirder. Jake Glazier had a bit of a different experience, remembering they had to coax him to go "ape shit" as his natural reaction to being genuinely excited is a more silent shock. MTV's Pimp My Ride had a simple premise: rapper Xzibit and his band of merry customizers would … Xzibit pimped my $500 Buick and I sold it for $18K Jake Glazier, whose face you may remember, said that when he didn't appear stoked enough about his revamped ride, Big Dane made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Contrary to the quick turnaround time implied on the show, contestants were left without their rides for up to seven months while the team worked.īut the juiciest bits aren't really about the cars at all. Other pimpees told HuffPo-and Horchberg corroborated-that amenities like TVs, champagne dispensers, 24-inch rims, and robotic arms(!) were added strictly for on-screen appeal and removed before the cars came off the lot. To Horchberg, this constitutes a demonstration of the diligence and care with which the show treated its contestants and their beloved automobiles.Ī contestant named Justin Dearinger told HuffPo that years later-and after he'd done extensive work to the car on his own-his pimped ride spontaneously burst into flames while he was driving it.
#GAWKER CAR DRIVER#
Then he had to save up his own money to replace the engine.Ĭo-executive producer Larry Horchberg, interviewed as a kind of character witness in defense of Pimp My Ride, even admitted to having a tow truck driver on call in case pimped rides broke down. "They added a lot of extra weight but didn't adjust the suspension to compensate so I felt like I was in a boat, and every time I hit a bump the car would bottom out and the tires would scrape inside the wheel well." According to Martino, the car would only run for about a month. "For the most part, it needed a lot of work done to make it a functioning regular driver, which they did not do." Martino said he had a hard time even driving the car home. "There wasn't much done under the hood in regards to the actual mechanics of the vehicle," according to Seth Martino. Of course they didn't! Rest assured that the interview-which you are strongly urged to read in full-contains many more anecdotes like this one.
On a show like Pimp My Ride, it would be surprising if the pimped rides actually did run as intended, so lets get the obvious out of the way first: much of the time, the cars didn't work. The Huffington Post interviewed several contestants who appeared on the show, and their experiences included barely functioning cars, gadgets that were removed as soon as the cameras stopped rolling, fat-shaming, bad relationship advice, and a little friendly verbal coercion by some dude named Big Dane. That's right: Xzibit is a fraud, and Pimp My Ride was insane bullshit. The credibility of our most cherished cultural lodestars is crumbling before our eyes, and the mighty haven't stopped falling. In this fraught American media landscape, who can be trusted? Brian Williams is a faker, and Bill O'Reilly is too.