Apparently, MTV’s decade-old show Pimp My Ride was a phony.
During a “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit, contestants Jake Glazier from Season 4 and Seth Martino and Justin Dearinger from Season 6 discussed their experience on the show. The Huffington Post then caught up with them and they further exposed what went on behind the scenes.
Some of the props that were used to “pimp” these rides were immediately removed after filming. Dearinger said that the “pop-up” champagne addition and a “drive-in theater” that was installed in his car were removed because producers did not want to promote drinking and driving with the champagne and the drive-in theater wasn’t safe for driving on the street. Martino said that a robotic arm that was added on to his car was “controlled by commands that were entered into a laptop by the spiky haired guy off screen” and that in actuality it “was just a robotic arm with a bunch of wires hanging out of it.”
Martino said that the televisions in the headrests and LED lights in his car seats stop working after the show. The cotton candy machine was installed in his trunk without leaving enough room for the dome top to keep the cotton candy “from flying all over the place.”
After the cars would start breaking down, show participants would call West Coast Customs and Mad Mike would try to help as best as he could.
“The people who had cars that appeared on the show would call me, and I would leave my desk, run to meet up with the flatbed tow truck and go help them,” Mike said.
Martino said that all the luxuries added to his car made it hard to drive home and contrary to how it seemed on the show, much was not done to the engine.
“There wasn’t much done under the hood in regards to the actual mechanics of the vehicle,” Martino said. “For the most part, it needed a lot of work done to make it a functioning regular driver, which they did not do.” He continued, ” Martino said he had a hard time even driving the car home. “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.”
Martino’s car only lasted a month and then he had to save up money to invest in an engine. Glazier sold his car after a month for $18,000 to MTX, whose sound system was in the car.
Former executive producer Larry Hochberg said that certain additions were removed for “safety reasons.” He recalled when 24-inch spinners were taken off a 1977 Cutlass and replaced with 20-inch rims for daily driving.
The homes in which Xzibit would arrive to to “surprise” the contests were not actually their homes. They were rented by MTV. The contestants were also scared into having an enthused reaction when they saw their car after its make over.
“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 … we expect you to be a little more f###### enthusiastic,'” Glazier remembered.
Hochberg said that it’s unfair to say that not enough work was put into the mechanics of the cars.
“Some of the cars were so old and rusted that they would have mechanical issues no matter how much work you put into them [and] the production team and the car shops worked their butts off to get parts for these cars.”