On Saturday the SPEED channel's crappy car show "Two Guys and a Garage" featured the two hosts -- both well into their 50s, bald, bearded, most likely grandparents -- who riced the $@&% out of a 2001 Ford Focus ZX. The damn thing was neon yellow to begin with, but it only went downhill from there as the added an ABS "body kit" (which went on with double-stick tape), painted the window frames with spray paint, painted the calipers to match the body, added a FAKE CHROME EXHAUST (just a pipe that bolts onto the existing exhaust), added totally riced-out stick on (velcro, this time) covers for the headlights and tail lights and then spray-painted the wheels. Oh yes, and a fake hood scoop with fake carbon fiber was installed, yet again using double-sided tape.

Now, it is common wisdom that something is no longer cool when your parents are doing it. Watching these older guys, with their sideburns and beer guts hanging out, "rice out" that Focus was a pretty clear statement that the ricer/tuner scene is past its prime; hopefully a new generation of 16-year-old car "modder" will take note. We won't know for certain until APC files Chapter 11; that will be the sign of the ricer apocolypse.

Note to ricers: when your Grandpa does it, that's not cool anymore.

Two other semi-related incidents:

1) Giant glossy black SUV rolls up and parks. Totally blacked out, debadged, limo tint all around, slammed a good four inches below stock, rollin' chrome "twennies" with racing (not off-road) rubber; the ridiculous chromed rims are 12-spoke with every odd spoke painted black to match the body paint, a West Coast Customs wannabe if you've ever seen one. Rumbly exhaust, perhaps straight pipes or Flowmasters. Guess who gets out -- trust fund kid who thinks he's the next eminem? Local NBA player? Actual imported genuine L.A. gangster?

Scottsdale houswife in Gucci sweats, three adorable blonde urchins in tow. Even though it was lowered, she still needs a kick-down stepladder (chromed) to climb down. Glancing inside I could see that each kid had their own 7-inch LCD. Pimp my ride indeed.

Note to ricers: when your Mom does it, that's not cool anymore.

2) Apple-green-sparkle Eclipse pulls even at the stoplight, early 2000 model. It is slammed, tint all around, body kit by ZeroSports. It is actually a pretty clean job, no excessive junk like LEDs in the windshield sprayers or fake chrome wheel covers. The ABS front lip has seen better days and the tint is starting to bubble in the back windows, otherwise it could be an extra from Fast N Furious 2. The exhaust has a crappy tin rumble, indicitave of an eBay/PepBoys axelback.

We're the front cars at a stoplight on a very, very long and straight piece of blacktop. As expected, when the Eclipse peeps my hood scoop the driver revs their engine, twice. Suddenly both windows roll down. Who do I see -- wannabe Icy Hot Stuntaz? Tough Latino types, ready to rumble? Mean dude and his chick, fresh from the tattoo parlor?

Two girls barely over driving age, both sporting braces, both chewing enough gum to choke a horse; they are simultaneously talking to each other as well as to their cell phones. In the space of a single traffic light (perhaps 90 seconds) I hear the phrase "oh my god!" at least seven times. The driver tries to peel out when she leaves, but hasn't mastered the art of friction-loading the engine for launch. As it pulls away I can see the exhaust is kicked out at a 45-degree angle.

Note to ricers: when your little sister does it, that's not cool anymore.

 

What a true post, meilers...

A guy in England is getting rich selling aerosol cans filled with fake mud. It sells for the American equivilent of $14 a can. It's marketed for the garage-to-shopping mall crowd who don't take the vehicles into the field. Now SUV owners can have the macho off-road look without doing the hard driving. This guy plans to open in the US market, too.

here's the spray-on mud story...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/servic...4620071.column

 

Here's the episode of the show:

http://www.twoguysgarage.com/episodes/index.php?epi=406

Check out that kickass Focus, clearly they added 50 whp.

 

This reminds me of an episode of Pimp My Ride where they took this old Caprice Classic(ford) and did some decent stuff to it, nothing too dramatic as usuall. UNTIL, the last 5 minutes of the show. THey kept mentioning that they wanted to give it that "Impala look". SO, WHAT DO THEY DO!? ADD ****ing IMPALA symbols (chevy) to a FORD. I don't think it gets any worse than that. Two rival companies, both domestic, both being dissed here. Although, we always knew that Chevy> Ford.

 

Hate to be the one to break it to ya, but the Caprice is a Chevy model.

 

No offense, but if you're the type of person that judges weather or not something is 'cool' or not based on who has it, you're the exact type of person that causes companies like APC to sell so much crap in the first place. My parents listen to Cream, I still think they're (Cream is) cool as f***. Old *** men have sweet old school 240z's, I still think they're (240z's are) cool. My little sister has an iPod, I still think it's a cool toy.

If you are, or have ever been, a person who puts 'rice' or 'semi-rice' things on your car, the only reason to be mad or sad about the three examples in this thread is that it makes you realize how dumb the fad was to begin with. Things that are truly cool have no endpoint or experation date, and they certainly don't have a certain demographic as you tried to point out.

Riced out cars are like rollerblades...they weren't even cool to begin with, and everyone who used to have them admits that they were never cool.

 

No, I think you missed the point. Things that are "cool" are anti-establishment and antisocial, from the illegal pelvic motions of Elvis to the sneer of James Dean to the giant Hawaiian-print "jams" shorts skateboarders used to wear in the '80s. "Cool" most definitely does have an expiration date, which is why we all now cringe when we see '70s and '80s fashion choices (neon colors, anyone?) which at the time we thought were cooler than anything. We would have called them "hella cool," as I grew up in Ohio, or "bad" -- did "hella" make anyone cringe?

Rollerblades and iPods have utility going for them; outside of being cool or not, they still have functionality, which "rice" car mods certainly do not. Also, they were built from day one to appeal to a mass market/pop culture.

The very reason ricers modify their cars in that fashion is to make an anti-culture, anti-establishment statement driven by machismo and a desire to immitate the supposed "street racer" culture; they don't want to be like grandma or mom or little sis, they want to be like Vin Diesel, Tyrese and that blond dumb guy. When someone puts vinyl flames all up and down the sides of a rust-bucket Civic DX and adds an eBay exhaust, they're just trying to set themselves apart from the other billion people with that car, but they're also trying to cop some attitude off that (largely fictional) scene, as presented by Hollywood and other media sources. The sad thing is, many of them actually believe that because they can make their car look like the fictional street racers they can also drive like them; I see so many riced-out cars weaving in and out of traffic here with no regard for anyone at all that frankly it frightens me. You can't cut the springs, remove the exhaust and put 12" reversed rims on a car and not seriously impair your control of the vehicle (even for an expert driver).

Having their car modification trends co-opted and become mainstream is a ricer's worst nightmare, as I pointed out -- you can't rebel against the establishment when it has stolen your idea. I just find it so ironic (and hilarious) when a white, suburban housewife is driving a car that three years ago would have made any rap star drop their rope chains on the floor in envy, or when little sister is driving her older brother's hand-me-down ricemobile and doesn't seem to grasp the image it projects.

Trust me, if I taped that episode where the 50-year-olds "riced out" that Ford Focus and showed it to the incoming Freshman at my university, they'd never touch their cars again -- maybe I should do that as a public service

 

"Hella" anything is still a nor-cal thing. I don't really even notice when other people say it, and I don't catch myself when I say it. But I see your point.

Ricing out a car is one thing, but adding tasteful style modifications is another. Suppose that the body kit was not taped on. Or real carbon fiber was used. Or in the end, the car just looked good. Maybe instead of a tip, they did a catback, or worst case, an axleback exhaust. To see old men and soccer moms doing something like this is only a sign that this has been accepted into general culture, not the apocolypse

 

Man I thought you were talking to me for a second....

 

my wife yelled at me recently for saying hella.

"Did you just say 'hella'? oh my god..."

 

It's true. Sometimes fads and crazes are accepted by mainstream society and loose value as badges of non-conformity. That doesn't mean however, that the cliques and iconoclasts that first embraced them will simply go away.

Some fads of the '70s like **** carpeting and fern bars have certainly seen better days. On the other hand, men stopped rubbing grease and oil into their hair and white-collar males began to wear shirts to work that were not white in color. These fads became generally accepted values of contemporary grooming and dress.

Bikers who lived the life in the late '60s and 70's wore nasty denims and leathers and still do today. They didn't give up on their distictive fashion sense just because a lot of whipped, office-drone slackers copied their style for the weekend Harley-Davidson binges so common today. You can still find these old, pot-bellied, greybearded bikers in the clubs today. But, you can go to the mall and buy into the Harley look if you want too.

Some of the "ricer" scene (as described above) will undoubedly be absorbed by mainstream culture. "Altezza" style lights are likely to be around for a long time as LED lighting makes incandescent bulbs obsolete for signal and running lights. Likewise, high-powered little rockets will become common vehicles as the world passes into the post "peak oil" era.

I don't think "ricers' will go away just because some of their stylistic hallmarks are absorbed by the mainstream. "Ricers" are a contempory manifestation of a much older subculture: the hot-rodders of the '40s and 50's. Just as white middle american males discovered they had disposable cash after WWII and decided to spend $$$ on their favorite toys (cars), so asian and latino culture will influence this "hot rod" scene as they excercise their new economic muscle on the automotive market place.

It's all just a big wonderful game on wheels and the more people that get a chance to play it, the better it gets.

 

I always thought it was hello, like hellodumb...

 

So you're telling me you don't think the old-school bikers and genuine Hell's Angels aren't PISSED that a lot of upper-middle class businessmen with a free weekend are buying custom $40,000 Harleys and motoring to Sturgis like they own the place?

Certainly many trends from the past are now a permanent part of pop culture (for better or worse); I guess the point I was making was that the "ricer" mentality was an act of rebellion, not just a cultural fad. Once everyone is doing it, you can't count it as a rebellious act; it loses its power to shock, annoy or get attention.

Even if the "Two Guys" had used genuine, high-quality parts and made changes under the hood as well as to the exterior of the car (and done some suspension work as well) the act of modifying a low-power car and trying to make it raceworthy has definitely become mainstream and common, rather than the rebellious act it once was. We just tend to sneer at the wannabes ("we" being WRX/STI owners) because we start with a stronger platform and foundation (in comparison to other common mod-friendly vehicles such as Civics, Integras and Focuses) and thus have a greater chance of making something that actually does perform better and faster, and not just look like it does.

I think another poster had a good analogy to the first "tuner" scene in the '50s and '60s; that "muscle car" era was also driven by the need to rebel, as many teenagers reacted to the oppressive culture of that time -- and that rebellion became mainstream, and spawned NASCAR, modern drag racing in all its forms and many other aspects of car culture. That rebel era was shut down for a while by the '70s gas crunch, and now the offspring of that crunch (small, fuel-efficient, cheap vehicles) were embraced by yet another rebellious teen generation. Regardles, like I've said several times so far, it ain't rebellious if your other family members (or your teacher, or your boss) are doing it

I still think that a Scottsdale (wannabe L.A.) housewife riding around in something that was clearly inspired by an NBA player's garage as shown on CRIBZ is stupid

 

Wow, really? Growing up in Ohio we all used to joke that we "got" trends and other cultural movements about three years after everyone else; for instance, skateboards and "jams" shorts showed up in Cincinnati around 1985, when 82-83 was the birth of the California big-board skateboarding scene. I guess "hella" hung on longer there than it did in Ohio. My brother, living in Oregon, has picked up the adjective "burly," for which I mock him mercilessly.

 

For every serious hot rodder of the 40s and 50s that actually got greasey and swapped out a cam or set of rods, there were hundreds more that were just happy to paint flames on the cars or bolt-on a spotlight, sun visor or fender skirts. Obviously, the wannabe rodders never discouraged the genuine rodders from their pursuit of better performance. The same is true today. I wouldn't be surprised that a lot of the old guys who started hot rodding by buying a steering wheel **** or screwing on a static strap eventually worked up to side-port exhausts and headers. Some of the people who tape-on body kits today may be porting-out an intake in a couple of months. It's easy to poke fun at the posers and noobs, but remember that some of our best tuners may have started just that way.

Incidently, NASCAR was not borne of teen angst and non-conformism. The first part-time NASCAR drivers were full-time drivers for the moonshiners down south. The hot-rods they drove and later raced were bankrolled by the need to outrun federal revenuers.