A DRIVER who had his car revamped on MTV’s Pimp My Ride show has revealed the bizarre truth behind the makeovers on wheels.
Behind the scenes of the hit reality show, cars were stuck in the garage for months and parts of the vehicles were completely unusable, according to multiple former contestants.
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From 2004 to 2007, rapper Xzibit hosted Pimp My Ride, where car owners would bring their beat-up cars to be “pimped out” into customized cars based on each driver.
But in the years after the show, multiple people who appeared on the program have come forward with their horror stories of what going on the show was actually like.
Justin Dearinger appeared on the last season of the series to fix up his 1997 Toyota RAV4 when he was 19 years old.
His car got renovated to turn the backseat into a romantic date spot, complete with bright red interiors, a rose dispenser, and a chocolate fountain for dipping strawberries.
The car also featured a pop-up champagne contraption and a TV screen under the hood for a drive-in theater effect — but Dearinger revealed years later that the glitzy add-ons were just for show.
In a Reddit AMA in 2012, 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.”
When Reddit users asked why they would put a bottle of champagne in his car when he was under drinking age, he responded, “For show i guess. I don’t really know.”
MTV co-executive producer Larry Hochberg responded to Dearinger’s claims in a statement to the Huffington Post in 2015.
“Sometimes we did things for safety reasons that the kids on show interpreted as us ‘taking away’ some items,” he said at the time.
Dearinger also revealed that it took five months for him to get his car back, despite the show making it seem like it had just been in the shop for the weekend.
He said that during the five months they had his car, they gave him $2,000 to rent another one.
Plus, when the car came back, it was only repaired cosmetically and still didn’t run in good condition.
“Yeah, they took a lot of things off that they originally put on the vehicle,” Dearinger said on Reddit.
“It sucked but it was ok. I was just happy I got my car back. It took 5 months.”
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SETH’S STORY
Contestant Seth Martino, who also appeared on Season 6, had a similarly disappointing experience.
Martino brought his 1989 Nissan Maxima on the show for a fixed-up ride, but the show kept his car in the garage for seven months.
“I will say that most people believe that PMR takes the car and gives it back in like a week or something. That’s what I thought was going to happen too,” Martino said in a Reddit AMA in 2013.
“But in actuality they had my car for roughly 7 months. with filming done in stages,” Martino said, adding that viewers could tell the process took a while because the length of his mohawk was different.
Martino told Xzibit and his team that he liked the Transformers franchise series, so his car was “pimped out” to have a transforming back seat that opens to reveal a sound system.
Plus, the car had a cotton candy machine in the trunk.
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However, Martino said he would have rather had a repaired car rather than a vehicle customized for his sweet tooth.
“I wanted to be on the show to have a nice looking car, but more than that I wanted a car that worked,” Martino wrote on Reddit.
“I didn’t get that from them. There are episodes that got new cars, and some were completely overhauled, but I wasn’t one of the lucky ones.”
He also said he only ever used the cotton candy machine once.
“The cotton candy machine 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,” Martino said.
By the time of the Reddit AMAs, Dearinger no longer had his “pimped out” ride.
Dearinger said he faced wiring issues that caused his car to catch on fire five years after the show.
Martino said his car only ran for a month after the show’s taping before he had to save up money to buy a new engine.
A Season 4 contestant, Jake Glazier, told HuffPost that he sold his souped-up 1986 Buick one month after filming because he had so many problems with the engine.
Hochberg told HuffPost, “It’s not accurate to say that we didn’t work on 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,” he said, adding that their teams worked hard to find parts for the cars.
MTV didn’t immediately return The U.S. Sun’s request for comment.
It’s unclear if Martino still drives his “pimped out” ride.
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