Xzibit's ? My Ride Was A Lot Faker Than You Thought *L.R.*
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"? My Ride" premiered on MTV in 2004 with a straightforward premise that was beautiful in its simplicity: Take a kid with a beat up car and have the rapper Xzibit orchestrate a massive and ridiculous upgrade. The theme song explained it all in just a few lines: "So you wanna be a player, but your wheels ain't fine / You gotta hit us up, to get a ? 't out ride."
But although the show operated within such a minimal framework, things were a bit more complicated behind the scenes. From cars that would break down in a matter of weeks to fat-shaming a contestant to one MTV employee apparently trying to convince another car owner to break up with his girlfriend to fit into the narrative, there was a lot more to the creation of this show than Xzibit simply saying, "Yo dawg."
The Huffington Post spoke with three of the kids who got their cars pimped: Jake Glazier from Season 4 and Seth Martino and Justin Dearinger from Season 6. All three had previously done brief AMAs on Reddit about their time on the show. (It should be noted that each appeared on "? My Ride" near the later half of its run.) And for a perspective from the other side of the camera, co-executive producer Larry Hochberg responded to a few of the claims made by contestants.
Although all of the people spoken to about "? My Ride" ultimately had mostly positive experiences, the reality of what it took to get pimped ended up being even more strange than expected.
"I was very excited and naïve, so they could have told me unicorns were making me breakfast and I wouldn’t have questioned it," Martino said. Viewers of this aughts-spectacle ended up having the same experience ...
Sometimes additions to the cars were just for the show and would be taken out of the vehicle immediately after filming.
In Justin Dearinger's Reddit AMA, he claimed that "they actually take out a lot of the stuff that they showed on TV," such as in his case, a "pop-up" champagne contraption and a "drive-in theater." Further explaining to HuffPost, Dearinger said that they removed the champagne part because the show didn't want to condone drinking and driving and the theater was removed for not being street safe.
According to Larry Hochberg, however, the removals were done with a specific purpose in mind. "Sometimes we did things for safety reasons that the kids on show interpreted as us 'taking away' some items," he said. He gave an example where 24-inch spinner rims on a 1977 Cutlass would look amazing for television, but "out of abundance of caution" they'd end up switching the spinners to "beautiful 20s for daily driving."
That said, it seems as if things were occasionally put into cars with no intention of them ever working in real life. For example, a robotic arm installed into Seth Martino's car was, as he put it, actually solely "controlled by commands that were entered into a laptop by the spiky haired guy off screen." In reality, it "was just a robotic arm with a bunch of wires hanging out of it."
And often additions -- such as the famous backseat TV screens -- simply wouldn't work.
But although the show operated within such a minimal framework, things were a bit more complicated behind the scenes. From cars that would break down in a matter of weeks to fat-shaming a contestant to one MTV employee apparently trying to convince another car owner to break up with his girlfriend to fit into the narrative, there was a lot more to the creation of this show than Xzibit simply saying, "Yo dawg."
The Huffington Post spoke with three of the kids who got their cars pimped: Jake Glazier from Season 4 and Seth Martino and Justin Dearinger from Season 6. All three had previously done brief AMAs on Reddit about their time on the show. (It should be noted that each appeared on "? My Ride" near the later half of its run.) And for a perspective from the other side of the camera, co-executive producer Larry Hochberg responded to a few of the claims made by contestants.
Although all of the people spoken to about "? My Ride" ultimately had mostly positive experiences, the reality of what it took to get pimped ended up being even more strange than expected.
"I was very excited and naïve, so they could have told me unicorns were making me breakfast and I wouldn’t have questioned it," Martino said. Viewers of this aughts-spectacle ended up having the same experience ...
Sometimes additions to the cars were just for the show and would be taken out of the vehicle immediately after filming.
In Justin Dearinger's Reddit AMA, he claimed that "they actually take out a lot of the stuff that they showed on TV," such as in his case, a "pop-up" champagne contraption and a "drive-in theater." Further explaining to HuffPost, Dearinger said that they removed the champagne part because the show didn't want to condone drinking and driving and the theater was removed for not being street safe.
According to Larry Hochberg, however, the removals were done with a specific purpose in mind. "Sometimes we did things for safety reasons that the kids on show interpreted as us 'taking away' some items," he said. He gave an example where 24-inch spinner rims on a 1977 Cutlass would look amazing for television, but "out of abundance of caution" they'd end up switching the spinners to "beautiful 20s for daily driving."
That said, it seems as if things were occasionally put into cars with no intention of them ever working in real life. For example, a robotic arm installed into Seth Martino's car was, as he put it, actually solely "controlled by commands that were entered into a laptop by the spiky haired guy off screen." In reality, it "was just a robotic arm with a bunch of wires hanging out of it."
And often additions -- such as the famous backseat TV screens -- simply wouldn't work.
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Seth Martino's car seemed to be particularly low quality. "There were plenty of things wrong with it," he told HuffPost, including television screens never working again after filming. As Martino recalled, some things that didn't work on the car included the LED lights that were put in the seats. "They would get really hot if left on so I couldn't drive with them on," Martino said. "They took the gull-wing doors off because the pistons used to lift them kept them from putting seat belts in the back which was highly dangerous." A cotton candy machine they installed was fit into the trunk without leaving enough room for the dome top to keep the cotton candy strands "from flying all over the place."
Apparently, Mad Mike would try and help out when cars would have problems. MTV also had flatbed tow truck driver on call according to Larry Hochberg. "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," he said. Hochberg also said the cars would occasionally have wiring issues, which he would coordinate in getting back to the West Coast Customs or eventually the GAS shop. At least it seems for the serious issues, MTV attempted to reconcile problems. "I made sure that things were fixed on cars that needed fixing," Hochberg said. But speaking of the root of those more serious issues ...
Although the cars were visually pimped, the insides were seemingly given far less attention.
From the onset here, it should be noted that Larry Hochberg says that "it's not accurate to say that we didn't work on the mechanics of the cars" and that the contestants on the show had a misconception of what had happened with their vehicles. As Hochberg explained to HuffPost, "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." In one instance, MTV even sent someone all the way to a desert junkyard in Arizona just for a replacement hood on a car. A lot of these cars were almost spent and this wasn't a show about saving cars from breaking down, it was a show about pimping. That said, as mentioned before, the cars did break down.
Jake Glazier, who felt "there were a lot of problems" with the mechanics, sold his car after just about a month. He was then told by the new owner that it had already blown out. Glazier told one example of what he felt was shoddy work: the car needed a muffler, and so a fake exhaust pipe was installed to make it seem as if that's what the car was supposed to sound like, "even though it was just lack of a muffler."
"There wasn't much done under the hood in regards to the actual mechanics of the vehicle," according to Seth Martino. "For the most part, it needed a lot of work done to make it a functioning regular driver, which they did not do." 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." According to Martino, that the car would only run for about a month. Then he had to save up his own money to replace the engine.
This happened many years after the show -- and after extensive outside work -- but one car exploded into flames.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-q6Y8nn1iA -
Five years after the show, with extensive and expensive outside work done by Dearinger himself, his pimped car burst into flames. Dearinger was driving home with his girlfriend when smoke started flooding the car. Then the two jumped out on the side of the road and within just moments the car was destroyed. You can watch the aftermath in the video above.
Although probably expected, those reveal shots of excitement were staged.
At the beginning of segments, Xzibit would be shown ringing the doorbell to a contestant's house to surprise them. These houses were often times not the contestants' homes; instead, each dwelling had been rented by MTV. Contestants were told to wait in the house and that at the door would either be someone holding something like a $100 Pep Boys gift certificate or it would be "ya boy Xzibit." So the surprise of Xzibit at the door was real, but in maybe a weirder way than you expected.
Less real was the famous freakouts of contestants jumping up and down when their pimped out car was revealed. All contestants spoken to ended up having to do multiple takes of their reaction with Justin Dearinger explaining, "I guess I didn't show enough enthusiasm.' The director specifically told him to "be more energetic and jump around and scream."
Jake Glazier had a bit of a different experience, remembering they had to coax him to go "ape sh*t" as his natural reaction to being genuinely excited is a more silent shock. His first real reaction to the car was just a quiet amazement where he said, "This is good" and they immediately yelled "re-do!" And then things got a bit weirder.
"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 fu*king enthusiastic,'" Glazier recalled. From there, Glazier went full over the top and his reaction (pictured above) even became a bit of a meme.
The show made it seem as if the cars were in the garage for a few days, but it was actually about half a year -- causing daily problems.
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From watching the show, you might have thought that the vehicles were in the shop for about a weekend or even a week or two and then were given back to their owners. Not the case at all. At least for the contestants spoken to by HuffPost, the cars would actually be in the garage for about six to seven months, which obviously caused some problems.
Seth Martino had a particularly frustrating time where he had to go through a "really small, shady company off the freeway by LAX because they were the only ones willing to rent to me because of my age." According to Martino, at first MTV only paid for a couple months and then he had to pay out of pocket. He held on to the receipts and then about two years after the show aired MTV reached out and finally reimbursed him. "It sucked having that rental car because they wouldn't take payments over the phone so once a month I had to drive all the way from West Covina to LAX just for them to swipe my card," Martino explained.
At least in these instances, the backstories and interests of the contestants were kind of made up.
For Jake Glazier, MTV "pretty much just went with what I told them," but with exaggerations. Glazier had said that his grandmother smoked in the car. For the show, MTV threw an "extra few dozen cigarette butts in the car to maker her just look like a total disgusting person."
MTV apparently didn't really listen to Justin Dearinger when they asked about his favorite colors. He said he "hated red" and then the interior of his car ended up being almost entirely that color.
The damage of the cars in the pre-pimped stage was also exaggerated by the show. Dearinger remembered that they added aircraft remover to help with the paint removal and made the bumper "look like it was falling off." -
LMAO!!
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The damage of the cars in the pre-pimped stage was also exaggerated by the show. Dearinger remembered that they added aircraft remover to help with the paint removal and made the bumper "look like it was falling off."
i wasnt convinced that people in LA would drive around in some of those beaters -
Sike
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Yo this is like finding out santa isn't real......I need a moment to re-evaluate my life.....
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Smh. Half of what you see, none of what you hear.......
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"yo dawg i herd u liked"
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Yeah it always seemed odd that they never upgraded the engines when the cars barely ran in the first place
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lol! I always felt certain things about the show was fake/exaggerated. Especially those Xzibit/reveal reactions.
This ? hilarious though. -
I ways found it odd That they never showed or talked about checking the car out first before any work is done
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Yo dawg we gave you five monitors and a mini fridge but ignore those failing breaks and oil leak.
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Let's be honest though, ? My Ride made X-to the-Z more famous than he would've been with just his music.
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LOL @ putting a cotton candy machine in a car but not changing the spark plugs
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I used to laugh at the beginning of each show they always played Xzibits music and he tried to look all tough and ? lol ? clown
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saw this the other day
i guess i always assumed they did upgrade the motor
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I used to laugh at the beginning of each show they always played Xzibits music and he tried to look all tough and ? lol ? clown
That ? started crippin to sell records. I ain't forgot about "paparazzi", Alvin. ? from New Mexico. -
lol at telling that man he better be ? enthusiastic.
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Inglewood_B wrote: »
and lets not forget the glory that was The Alkoholikz
been so long, I dont remember how to spell the name lol. But that group had some great tracks -
Show never made sense to me in the first place. people were living in the suburbs but their cars would be beat to hell
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i always thought that half the stuff they put in those cars weren't street legal, and only good for auto shows.
How am i supposed to drive around with a fish tank full of pirahna and top that off with a roller coaster, all in the same 82 Fiat Spider? -
They were ahead of the curve a lil bit, bc now all reality is 'aided-reality', where its real, but they are helped along with plots.
Before that, with Real World, that ? was largely straight forward.
But I have NO PROBLEM with any of this. It was a great premise and great show. -
I just watched it to see what kind of creative ideas they would come up to fix those beaters up.
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Lol I saw a clip of them putting a recording studio in a girls car and I was weak as ? laughing at that stupid ? .
