MTV’s Pimp My Ride was Shady as Hell
Participants said being on Pimp My Ride often involved losing your car for months, no mechanical repairs, and temporary features.
Remember when people used to watch TV? That seemed like a century ago. Once upon a time, there was a show called Pimp My Ride on a “music” channel. Even people that didn’t grow up watching it know about or have heard of it. Why? Well, the concept was just as ridiculous as the execution. If you had a car that was barely running, needed a new transmission, and was more rust than frame, you were the perfect candidate. However, they weren’t there to fix your car.
Technically, MTV didn’t call the show “fix my ride”, but that’s a little bit of semantics. If you liked fire, they installed flame throwers. If you liked music, they would throw in 20 speakers, four subs, and two TV screens in the back. It was, without a doubt, ridiculous to begin with, but there are some untold parts of what made this show possible that are truly interesting. Thanks to Top Trending on YouTube, we get to learn about the truth behind Pimp My Ride.
In our modern social media-based society, word gets around fast. A lot of the information regarding the behind-the-scenes with the show comes from previous contestants explaining their experiences. One of these individuals is Justin Dearinger, who had work done by the show on his 1997 Toyota Rav 4. While the show made it seems like they took cars from hero to zero in less than a week, it actually took the team, “five months to complete the car.” Not to mention that, if the car had any outstanding mechanical or functional issues, the team made no effort to fix them. Their sole concern was aesthetic shock value or, as Dearinger put it, “Mickey Mouse Cosmetics”.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, during the five-month time span that the shop had his car, Dearinger was on his own. He had to pay for transportation out of pocket and received no recompense during that time. Assuming your car is already running terribly and in poor condition (the basis for the show), it’s pretty messed up to then take that car, which obviously the owners didn’t have the money to fix, and expect the owner to be fine.
Not to mention all the auditions were smoke and mirrors, just like everything else on the show. It got to the point where the contestants would be in rented houses rather than their real homes because where they actually lived didn’t fit MTV’s “TV vision”.
At least the contestants would be able to keep the wacky cosmetics that they did install to the cars right? Wrong again.
Most if not all of the TV screens, cotton candy machines, etc, were subject to removal. This was done after filming due to, “safety reasons.” That’s a direct quote from the show’s producer. So these builds were never really intended for the owners, just for the cameras. The show gave the term automotive fabrication to a completely new meaning. While some contestants called their experiences on the show positive, we have our doubts.
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