We always like to take a look behind the scenes of beloved tv shows, but have you ever wondered what happened to the people and cars who appeared with Xzibit on Pimp My Ride after the show ended?
Taking to Reddit, these previous contestants of the MTV show hosted by rapper Xzibit revealed all the secrets behind the show and what really happened with some of the craziest additions to their rides.
The three men also shared how staged their reactions were, how legal some of the crazy modifications actually were, and even how they were portrayed on television.
Pimp My Ride was peak MTV and got a global following after it was adapted for Europe, Brazil, Indonesia, and some Baltic countries – it ran for six seasons in the early Noughties.
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What actually happened after Pimp My Ride?
Television back in the early 2000s, particularly on MTV, was wild. You had classics like Cribs, Punk’d, Catfish, and our personal fave, Pimp My Ride.
The show, hosted by rapper Xzibit, ran for six seasons and used the help of West Coast Customs to take people’s vehicles from drab to fab. And it went global, with spin-offs in Europe, Indonesia, and Brazil.
Like all reality TV, though, people did wonder exactly how realistic Pimp My Ride really was, and whether the cars were actually drivable after they were done.
Luckily for us, three previous contestants who’d had their rides pimp’d with the help of Xzibit took to Reddit so people could ask them whatever they wanted about their experience on the MTV show.
Seth Martino, from Season 6’s episode Seth’s nasty Nissan, liked ‘most’ of what the PMR team did to his car, but said that the team leaned into the contestant’s body size.
He watched as they dumped two bags of generic candy into the footwells and onto the seats of his pre-pimped car, to give the impression that the guy loved to eat so much, he had to have snacks on hand in his Nissan.
The team also installed a cotton candy machine in the trunk of his car, with no space for the dome, meaning sticky cotton candy flew out into the trunk while he drove.
Despite that, Seth said that Xzibit was a lovely guy and he was happy with the two TVs the team installed, including a DVD player, which back in the day was the height of technology.
Despite some parts being staged, Seth revealed that:
“The show actually did a great job of keeping the car owners out of the loop to keep the surprise ‘alive’ so to speak.”
“What they did was make my piece of s**t sound exceptionally awesome”
Jake Glazier was a contestant on season four of the show and back in 2005 MTV pimped his 1986 Buick Century.
The main problem for Jake was that if the car starts out terrible, the team doesn’t actually change anything. So they made it look awesome, but ‘they don’t fix any of the mechanical issues, and my car was a piece of s**t.’
He explained that all the cool extra tech had to be powered by something, so MTV installed an additional six batteries into the vehicle.
All three contestants revealed that MTV staged the houses where Xzibit would turn up.
They were, in fact, rented by the TV company.
Contestants were told to wait to see whether the rapper himself or a crew member with a $100 gift card would turn up, making the contestants’ reactions ones of genuine surprise.
The three contestants also revealed that if your reaction wasn’t crazy or intense enough when seeing your new car, then MTV would keep shooting until they thought it was good enough.
Jake attempted to sell his car on eBay and was contacted by Viacom three hours after it went live, asking him to take the listing down.
But the car wasn’t driveable, and he couldn’t auction it off, so he sold it back to the TV company.
Justin Dearinger from season six of the show had his ’97 Toyota RAV4 pimped by MTV.
He revealed that even though it looks like it only takes a couple of weeks in the shop to pimp your ride, Justin was left without a car for five months.
He was given $2,000 by MTV to rent a car, but being 19, he decided to hire a car for a month and pocket the rest.
Justin’s Toyota was actually in an okay condition, but the team removed the bumper and made the dent on the side of the car way worse to make the transformation more drastic.
After filming ended, the team actually removed some of the coolest parts of his car, like the ‘pop-up champagne’, because they were unsafe or illegal.
Justin’s car had some faulty wiring put in by a different shop five years later. As a result, the car sadly caught fire and burned, a piece of MTV history lost in the flames.
So, there you have it, a lot of Hollywood magic was sprinkled on the cars, which were often left in a weird stasis where they couldn’t be resold, but also often couldn’t be driven. At least Xzibit was a nice guy, though.
Justin Dearinger via YouTube
The post People who appeared on Pimp My Ride revealed what actually happened to their cars after the show ended appeared first on Supercar Blondie.
