Ex-Contestants From Pimp My Ride Reveal The Show Is Nothing Like We Thought

Contestants being astonished to see Xzibit at their door was a hallmark of Pimp My Ride, but it wasn’t quite real. You see, they’d already been picked by MTV and knew that, when they opened the door, it would either be Xzibit or a gift card/prize — this way their surprise was at least partially genuine. Oh, and the house wasn’t even theirs — it was rented by MTV!

The ecstatic reactions when pimped rides had their big reveals were often contrived. Glazier told HuffPost that his first try was too muted, so, “Big Dane, very big dude, he… walks me around the shop for like ten minutes and he’s like, ‘Listen, we put a lot of work into this. We expect you to be a little more… enthusiastic.’” Cue another take and a much more obviously excited display!

None of the interactions between Xzibit and contestants were scripted — but they weren’t entirely off-the-cuff either. In reality, the contestants stayed within the confines of the ‘character’ producers had chosen to depict them as possessing. For example Dearinger revealed in his Reddit AMA, “All they gave me was a topic and we just went with it. My topic, obviously, was the ‘hopeless romantic.’” 

Pimp My Ride led viewers to believe the contestants were chosen because of the audition videos shown at the start of the show. This is where they would plead with MTV to choose their cars to be given a makeover. But here’s the thing — all these audition videos were professionally shot. The contestant had obviously already been chosen by the show!

Dearinger’s AMA gave a glimpse into the show’s casting process. He went to a casting call in a parking lot with 200 other hopefuls, and eventually this was cut down to an audition with 15 people. MTV told them whoever made the best video would get on the show, but it turned out that all 15 were chosen to take part anyway. Ain’t it always the way!

One of the wackiest modifications ever made on Pimp My Ride was the robotic arm installed in the vehicle of Martino. According to the man himself, though, it was all smoke and mirrors. He told HuffPost it was “controlled by commands that were entered into a laptop by the spiky-haired guy off-screen.” It never truly worked, and the wires hanging out were purely for show!

Martino told HuffPost that his car had plenty of problems, even after being pimped. For example, the TV screens they installed just didn’t work, and he couldn’t use the LED lights installed in his seats. Why? Martino claimed, “They would get really hot if left on, so I couldn’t drive with them on.” Oh dear.

Having a cotton candy machine in your trunk sounds like a fun novelty, but it was nothing but a hassle for Martino. He told Reddit it “didn’t have a protective hood that fit, so if I tried turning it on, it would get candy strands everywhere. Very messy. So, I never used it again after the shoot.”

“There wasn’t much done under the hood in regards to the actual mechanics of the vehicle,” claimed Martino, who knew his car had serious engine issues when he signed it over to MTV. “For the most part, it needed a lot of work done to make it a functioning regular driver, which they did not do.” In fact, he claimed the engine died after a month and he had to replace it himself. 

Before their bangers were whisked away by West Coast Customs, the contestants were interviewed about what they liked and disliked when it came to car modifications. Still, MTV didn’t necessarily pay much attention to their answers, especially if they thought a mod would pop on TV. This is how Dearinger, for example, wound up with a completely red interior — despite telling them he hated the color!

During Dearinger’s AMA, he revealed, “They actually take out a lot of the stuff that they showed on TV. Such as the ‘pop-up’ Champagne, and the ‘drive-in’ theater.” He later clarified to HuffPost that the Champagne was taken out because MTV worried it could be seen as an endorsement of drink-driving; the theater, meanwhile, was given the heave-ho because it wasn’t street safe.

Ryan Friedlinghaus quit Pimp My Ride after Season Four, and in recent years brought the world West Coast Customs: Under the Hood on Facebook Watch. While he’s still on TV, though, as per website Hot Cars, he did have to pay out $157,592 in back-pay to employees he’d shorted over the years. In fact, he was also accused of creating a toxic work environment and hiring illegal immigrants he could pay under the table.

Quinton Dodson — known as “Q” — was the West Coast Customs sales manager. He first met Friedlinghaus completely by chance — he was a delivery driver unloading crates of beer at Friedlinghaus’ father’s liquor store. They got to chatting, discovered a mutual love for vehicle modification, and eventually went into business together!

Electronics whiz Michael “Mad Mike” Martin was part of all six seasons of Pimp My Ride. In fact, he even left West Coast Customs when it stopped doing the show after Season Four, signing up to work for the new show garage Galpin Auto Sports. These days, he’s still showing up on reality TV shows such as the Discovery Channel’s Driven. 

Most fans of Pimp My Ride probably assumed cars were transformed inside a few days or maybe a week, tops. After all, how long can someone really be left without their means of transportation? That wasn’t the case, though — as per website HuffPost it sometimes took six or seven long months for the pimping process to be completed.

Have no fear, though, MTV had people covered — sort of. To make up for the long stretch with no car, it gave contestants $2,000 to rent a vehicle. The problem with that, though, is that this amount only covered two months of renting — not six or seven. Many of the contestants were also too young to legally rent a car in the U.S., rendering the money vaguely pointless.

According to IMDb Trivia, the pimping of their ride wasn’t quite as free as it appeared for some contestants. You see, the California Tax Authority and the IRS both saw any modifications as part of the contestant’s income. Therefore, the value of the upgrades had to be reported, and some contestants wound up with substantial tax bills. Bummer!

Owning a car with a chandelier inside and 24-inch spinner rims sounds like a great idea — until you try to drive the thing day-to-day! In California, where the show was shot, drivers must have insurance — and you can bet the premiums on an elaborate pimped ride were much higher than on a regular car. Talk about bringing someone crashing back down to reality!

Dearinger told HuffPost that his pimped ride attracted no end of attention from one group of people — cops! He claimed he was pulled over on a daily basis because of the strange modifications on his vehicle. Once he explained that the car was from the show, though, it was all good in the hood. Then he said the police “were really cool about it.”

Of the musician-turned-host, producer Larry Hochberg told HuffPost, “Xzibit is the greatest. He’s a talented rapper, and he is a natural host. He’s cool, funny, and always thinking on his feet. I really enjoyed working with him.” None of the contestants have anything bad to say about him either, with everyone agreeing he was just chill and super-personable.

Unfortunately for the contestants, their time with X-to-the-Z was pretty brief, all things considered. He was there at the start when the car was taken in, and at the end, when West Coast Customs did the big reveal. In between that, though, he was doing other things, and even while he was on-set, there wouldn’t have been a lot of free time for him to gab with the contestants. 

Xzibit may have presented the show, but he doesn’t want anyone asking him about fixing cars! He once told HipHopDX, “You saw me at the beginning, and you saw me at the end. I know as much as you do. I put gas in the [car] and I drive it. If it don’t start, I take it to the same place you do.”

In his AMA, Glazier revealed the drop-down computer monitor installed in his trunk was the single dumbest thing his pimped ride featured. To be honest, he has a point — who wants to look at a hanging monitor in their trunk? He wrote, “I wasn’t ever planning to set up a stool behind my car to get some WiFi in random Starbucks parking lots.”

When Glazier gave his car over to MTV, he knew it needed a new muffler — after all, the car was making noises it most definitely shouldn’t be. He expected this would be addressed but, instead, the garage simply added a fake exhaust pipe for the big reveal. This gave the impression that the heavy rumbling noise was coming from the exhaust and was nothing out of the ordinary!

MTV had a habit of exaggerating the dirty conditions of the contestant’s cars. For example, Glazier claimed when he told them his grandma smoked in his car, they took the chance to put an, “extra few dozen cigarette butts in the car to make her just look like a total disgusting person.” He understandably wasn’t too happy about that.

The production obviously wanted its pimping process to be hugely impressive — so they often made the vehicles look worse to begin with. In his AMA, Dearinger said, “They removed my front bumper, used aircraft remover, and enhanced the dent on the side of my car.” Television is all about telling a story, right? So, the bigger the transformation, the better.

On three occasions, the cars brought to the show were too far gone to be saved — so brand new ones were pimped instead! In the Season One finale, a cut-and-shut job of two Ford Escort halves didn’t work out. In the Season Two finale, an aspiring mechanic was given a new car to pimp, and in the Season Three finale the original Nissan Pulsar had battery fluid leaking into the main body. 

This is a weird one! Glazier claimed to HuffPost that MTV actually encouraged him to break up with his girlfriend. Why? Because that would make the sob story they were planning to tell — a lonely guy desperate to upgrade his car to get chicks — that much more compelling. Executive producer Hochberg categorically denied that this happened, though. 

Electronics expert Mad Mike was the one personality from Pimp My Ride who garnered nothing but positivity from Glazier in his AMA. He wrote, “Very cool guy! He helped me a lot after the show with some problems that came up with the car. He lived about an hour from me, and we would meet by the In & Out Burger.” 

Xzibit told The Breakfast Club podcast that he believed Pimp My Ride hurt his music career when it began. He revealed, “I wasn’t able to tour, I wasn’t able to continue building Xzibit as an MC. All of a sudden, it became almost bigger than the music. It was worldwide, it was on MTV, it was on these networks that were pushing it around the world, more than they were pushing my music.”

Xzibit claimed to HipHopDX that he had a very simple ulterior motive for taking on the Pimp My Ride hosting duties. He also had no clue the show would become such a phenomenon. He laughed, “I just wanted them to play my videos on MTV. I didn’t know it was gonna be a thing!” 

Contestant Brooke Siegel once revealed that nearly everything about her appearance on the show was fake. She knew one of the producers, so they said she could have her car pimped if she agreed to play along. She said she was 22, yet in reality was a 25-year-old cocktail waitress, and the show also portrayed her as a film fanatic.

Sadly, Martino felt fat-shamed by how producers constructed his episode. In his AMA he wrote, “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.” He added, “I did not have any candy all over my car. That was completely fabricated for the story.” 

Despite being the face most associated with the show, Xzibit claims he never benefited from it in the same way as West Coast Customs and MTV. He told The Breakfast Club that neither entity felt he was entitled to a bigger slice, and that hurt. He added, “I feel like the show was built on my back, my credibility in hiphop. I feel as though it became profitable for everyone else except me.”

As soon as the show ended, Xzibit went right back to touring — but then MTV wanted to film one last episode. He told The Breakfast Club they even offered to fly him back from his tour. He wasn’t overly keen, so he said, “Okay, just give me $1 million.” Playing hardball didn’t work, though — he was simply replaced as the episode’s host by Chamillionaire!

Amazingly, sometimes the vehicles had so many modifications that they became totally impractical. Martino told HuffPost, “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.” What good is a car if you can’t drive it?

So many pimped rides weren’t capable of driving away — or broke down soon after — that MTV kept a tow-truck on-call. Producer Hochberg told HuffPost, “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.” On the one hand, that’s very nice, but on the other, it does beg an uncomfortable question!

One of the provisos of appearing on the show was that you wouldn’t use the show’s name to try and sell your pimped ride. In his AMA, Glazier admitted to trying to get around this. He wrote, “I actually had to sign a contract that prohibited me from listing their final product on eBay, which I did. I was contacted by Viacom about three hours later, ordered to take it down.”

MTV owner Viacom sent threatening letters to two businesses in 2006 — online candy retailer Pimp My Snack and pet boutique Pimp My Pet. The media giant forced them to change their names, claiming infringement on the Pimp My Ride copyright. Pimp My Pet owner Liz Wilson told British newspaper The Guardian, “It was a choice of spending £400 to change the logo against thousands of pounds fighting, and potential bankruptcy.” 

Overall, the show was a positive experience for many contestants, despite its flaws. Take Dearinger, who told HuffPost, “Before then I was just a kid — I was shy, I was really shy. And then it’s sad to say but being on the show gave me some confidence. And it made me the person I am today. I’m the most outgoing person you ever met.”