During the mid-2000’s MTV’s “Pimp My Ride” was one of the most fascinating shows on TV.
Each week viewers were dazzled by the improvements and flashy accessories added to raggedy rides by the crew at West Coast Customs as host, Xzibit, would get the touching backstory of the lucky recipient of the custom remodeling.
In a recent interview with the Huffington Post, however, a handful of guests of the show revealed that more times than not the show was not all that it was cracked up to be.
Often times producers of the show would gravely exaggerate the stories of guests for TV purposes.
“I know I’m fat, but they went the extra mile to make me look extra fat by telling the world that I kept candy all over my seat and floor just in case I got hungry,” said one contestant. “I sat there and watched them dump out two bags of generic candy. … Then [they] gave me a cotton candy machine in my trunk.”
In addition to fudging the stories of the guests, another guest says that the actual cars still needed work after the makeover.
“There wasn’t much done under the hood in regards to the actual mechanics of the vehicle,” said another contestant whose car died a month after appearing on the show. “For the most part, it needed a lot of work done to make it a functioning [automobile], which they did not do.”
One of the show’s executive producers, Larry Hochberg, says some of the cars just couldn’t be saved no matter how much work the crew put in on them.
“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,” said Hochberg. “It’s not accurate to say that we didn’t work on the mechanics of the cars.”
