Pimp My Ride

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

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Pimp My Ride is a show that revolves around taking beat-up old cars and making them "cooler" by restoring and customizing them. The original version of the show began airing on MTV in 2004, and was hosted by West Coast rapper Xzibit, with the pimp jobs being done by West Coast Customs (later Galpin Auto Sports, or GAS). Since then, newer versions of the show (Pimp My Ride UK and Pimp My Ride International) have aired on MTV 2, with an added focus on cars from parts of Western Europe.

Tropes used in Pimp My Ride include:
  • The Alleged Car: Every vehicle that arrives in the shop. On more than one occasion, they decided that the car that they had been given to pimp out was literally unsafe to drive, so they simply sent it to a junkyard and bought a new one to tune up.
  • Awesome but Impractical: Some criticisms of the end result.
  • Better Than New: Xzibit and the crew take in viewers' Alleged Cars and turn them into Better Than New Cool Cars, even though they often end up being Awesome but Impractical.
  • Big OMG: A majority of contestants pretty much say this when their pimped out vehicle is revealed before their eyes.
  • Catch Phrase: "You've officially been pimped!"
    • "Yo dawg, I heard you like _____ so I put a ____ in your car so you can ____ while you drive!"
      • It's come to the point where any given depiction of recursion can be made funnier with just a picture of Xzibit's face pasted on it.
  • Cool Car: Every vehicle that leaves the shop.
  • Pimped-Out Car: Basically the entire point of the show. Many of which are personalized for their owners.
  • Product Placement: It sure feels like this a lot, the biggest example being the episode in which they pimped out a brand new Scion xB to replace an owner's old Escort, as explained above.
    • The Scion appeared at least one more time, when they decided that they would let the owner, a mechanics student, keep the other car as a future project.
      • Was actually a Toyota 4Runner in the second case, but still product placement nonetheless.
    • Also seen at the end of some episodes when the crew cleans and polishes the car, someone will call out something along the lines of "Make sure you use X brand motor oil for top performance." As you see them fill the car with a close shot of the packaging.
    • Making things even worse, European airings often censor out brand names, so a typical broadcast includes dialog along the lines of "SO WE PUT A BRAND NEW [silence] AND A [silence]".
      • Reruns on the Speed Network in the U.S. blank out any mention of MTV altogether. They also pixelate the Xzibit videos playing on the monitors because they didn't obtain the right to use the images.
  • Rice Burner: Some of the cars get turned into these.
    • All of the cars get turned into these.
  • Totally Radical: Yes.
  • Urban Legend: Rumors persist that at least one of the winners was subsequently car-jacked and murdered.