Years after Pimp My Ride turned rundown cars into flashy showpieces, former contestants say the reality wasn’t always so glamorous, with one later describing his customized car as “awful.”
Between 2004 and 2007, rapper Xzibit hosted MTV’s Pimp My Ride, transforming battered, unreliable vehicles into over-the-top custom creations complete with flashy paint jobs, booming sound systems and outrageous gadgets tailored to each owner’s personality.
On screen, the makeovers looked almost magical. Behind the scenes, however, several former contestants have since claimed the experience was far less glamorous than viewers were led to believe.
‘A little secret’
One of the most recent people to revisit the show is automotive YouTuber Freddy Hernandez, better known as Tavarish, who told his 3.13 million subscribers that some of the show’s most memorable makeovers weren’t always performed on the cars that viewers were watching.
His perspective comes from firsthand experience. After buying a 1999 minivan that had appeared on Pimp My Ride for just $850 and bringing it back to life, Hernandez said he discovered one of the show’s biggest behind-the-scenes secrets.
“A little secret that they probably don’t want you to know is the fact that a lot of times they didn’t use the original car,” he said in a YouTube clip that hit the eyes of more than 15 million people.
“They got cars that looked kind of like it and then they’ve modified those because the original cars were in really bad shape.”
Hernandez isn’t the only person to question what viewers saw on screen. One former contestant says his own experience painted a very different picture.
‘Whole interior was awful’
Among them was Justin Dearinger, who appeared during the program’s final season when he was 19 years old, hoping producers could breathe new life into his worn 1997 Toyota RAV4.
According to Dearinger, the transformation took far longer than television made viewers believe. While episodes suggested the cars spent only a short time in the shop, he said MTV kept his SUV for five months. During that time, the production gave him $2,000 to rent another vehicle.
When he finally got the RAV4 back, it had been transformed into a rolling date-night machine.
His newly customized SUV featured bright red upholstery, a chocolate fountain, a rose dispenser, a pop-up champagne holder and even a television mounted beneath the hood to recreate a drive-in movie experience for date nights.
On screen, the transformation looked like another over-the-top Pimp My Ride success story.
But Dearinger said he was shocked by the reveal – and not in a good way.
“The whole interior was awful. When they revealed my car, it was awkward because of the people there. I didn’t know who they were,” Dearinger wrote on the subreddit, Ask Me Anything. “I didn’t like the color.”
Show removes ‘a lot of the stuff’
But that wasn’t all. According to Dearinger, much of what viewers saw never actually stayed in the vehicle.
“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 wrote. “They gave me the projector at least.”
Speaking to the Huffington Post in 2015, co-executive producer Larry Hochberg said that “out of abundance of caution,” some features were removed after filming for “daily driving.”
“Sometimes we did things for safety reasons that the kids on show interpreted as us ‘taking away’ some items,” Hochberg said.
‘Mickeymoused cosmetic’
Even so, Dearinger maintained the biggest disappointment wasn’t the missing gadgets.
According to him, the SUV looked better than before, but it still wasn’t mechanically sound.
“It was all mickeymoused cosmetic,” he explained on Reddit. “Yeah, they took a lot of things off that they originally put on the vehicle.”
“It sucked but it was ok. I was just happy I got my car back,” he said. Years later, after spending around $20,000 repairing and upgrading the SUV, Dearinger said it exploded because of faulty wiring installed by the shop that carried out the final repairs.
If you were a fan of Pimp My Ride, please let us know what you think of these former contestants revealing what really happened on the show!
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