After the popularity of films such as The Fast and the Furious put car customisation at the forefront of people’s minds, reality television producers sought to capitalise by creating a show all about modifying run-down and beaten-up cars to make them better than new.
The result was the controversial but wildly popular MTV show Pimp My Ride, hosted by rapper Xzibit that ran from 2004 until 2007 in the United States, with several international spin-offs created in the wake of its success.
The conceit is that the host of the show would go to the garage of a person who wanted their car to be “pimped”, showing it off and trying to convince MTV and the host that the car needs to be fixed.
The host makes fun of the car, points out some particular issues and then takes it away to a custom workshop for it to be effectively rebuilt from scratch and customised based on the interests of the car’s owner, often with somewhat outrageous results.
As with most reality TV of the era, it is far less about making tangible improvements to the car and more about creating somewhat outlandish one-off custom cars, typically fitted with extra-large speakers, LCD screens and other major pieces of equipment.
However, this was not the only way the show would court controversy, as many of the custom features needed to be immediately removed to make the car road legal, typically for legal reasons.
As well as this, the custom “rides” would take up to seven months to be completed, and during that time MTV did not provide any support or alternative means of transportation.
The show staged a lot of set pieces, including the houses the contestants received the news in, the condition of the cars, some of the cars themselves if they were write-offs, as well as many of the reactions.
As well as this, whilst the cars were ostensibly given away for free, often the contestants would need to pay tax on what was deemed “winnings”, typically leading to participants having to sell the car they just had “pimped” unless they happened to claim a tax deduction as part of their business.
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