80% Of "Pimp My Ride" Was Fake. Here’s The Evidence 

The biggest clue that it was all fake was that it was a TV show

Being a 90s kid is tough now. All the shows I enjoyed as a kid are turning out to be really sinister.

As a “logical teen” watching this show back then, all I could think about was “how do all these unnecessary accessories make my car better?”. But I guess there’s a reason why the show was called “Pimp my ride” and not “Fix my ride” lol

Kinda like when Storage Wars cuts open a lock on an abandoned locker, raise the door and there's gaffer tape covering the brand logos on every item 😂

To be honest, I can totally get over the "making the car more damaged" or the "renting a fake much more filmable house, meeting Xzibit with fake reactions" things - it's a TV show after all. But making people themselves look much worse and disgusting, while being total assholes towards them, is a huge problem nonetheless.

Today's Fact: The largest living organism on Earth by mass is a fungus in Oregon that covers over 2,200 acres!

I actually feel bad for Xzibit. By all accounts he seems like a decent guy who every contestant actually liked, but ended up being cast into the shadows of “the guy from PMR” and the brunt of many jokes.

My first career starting in high school was installing high-end car audio and security at one of the longest-running shops in the country which was opened in the '70s (I started in 1989) and produced several nationally recognized, IASCA and NACA winning vehicles. I did it full time for about 15 years and part time for several years after that. This show aired when I was still doing that work. I always thought many of the mods were ridiculous, like screens in the headliner. Not flip-down screens. Just flush with the headliner so you have to look straight up to view them. Who the hell is going to benefit from that?! I could tell a lot of the work was just for the camera and wouldn't stand the test of time or be used much because of its impracticality. Not only that, but back in the '90s, a friend of mine in Austin tried out for The Real World when they were preparing to film it there. They told him he could have the job if he played a gay man. He's totally straight and was married with two kids at the time, so he declined. So none of these revelations about another MTV show surprise me at all. "Reality TV" my a$$!

I'm shocked to learn that a reality TV show is fake.

Never once did they ever address anything mechanically wrong with the cars they fixed. It was all bells and whistles.

I'm born 1989. I saw this show back there. I always knew there was something wrong with this show. The microphone mounted on the "winners" when he knocked at the door was the big fact for me that i asked myself questions.

News flash from Hollywood: this is how every reality show is made, even to this day.

I think even before they got exposed, we all knew something was up deep down inside 😂 a mini theater in an SUV, turning a sedan to an ice cream truck. Some ridiculous concepts that were not practical or sustainable at all. It's a shame that contestants weren't aware of the consequences, I was under the impression it was all staged, I had no idea the producers were this cruel.

This situation is kinda embarassing. Now, I feel richer than them even tho I am broke. 😂

Isn’t this a reupload? I’ve seen this before.

I know someone who had an old Ford Capri ‘pimped’ on the UK version with the cringe Tim Westwood, and he could ever use it because the engine was still broke

A friend of mine has a show on cable TV and he said it's incredible to him the amount of crap that they don't have to actually fake but refilm literally 50 times for a 15-second segment. By the fifth time what they were doing has lost all meaning and they just want to get it over. I just don't understand it compared to all the people I know with RU-vid where it's just four guys running around with GoPros having a good time, with way more people watching people watching

As someone who used to work in reality tv, this is pretty much how ALL reality tv is produced. It varies in how much is based on fact or made up, but there is almost always a producer feeding lines or steering the dialogue to tell the story that they want to

When I was as film school we learnt "Theres nothing real about reality TV" and that was well over 10 years ago

SunnyV2 is the only creator who can bring back old drama and make it reappear into our minds.

I’ve been on reality tv, I was on the show ‘Take me Home’ which is a dog adoption show based in Western Australia. At least 60% of the stuff that was filmed wasn’t in the final product, but we did get to keep the dog. Some scenes, like when we got her from the airport, we did that sequence half a dozen times, filmed from different angles and with different cameras each time.

Not gunna lie. Finding out all the shows I watched as a kid were completely fake hurts just a little...

10:33 “He was lovely. High as a kite and lovely.” 😆

A reality tv show is fake?? No…

You did a great job with this vid. Yet I feel unfullfiled. There's gotta be more to the story of PMR. Would love to see a miniseries. Cheers

Glad to hear everyone had a solid experience with Xzibit at least. He seems like a genuine dude and was an excellent host for the show

This was an amazing video, great job to explain everything with details. I saw this show when I was a teen.

This lady couldn’t put her snake down for the interview 😂

They really did seth dirty by telling the world he kept candy all over his car just in case 😭

It's a real shame, man. In 6th grade I'd stay up until like 3am just to catch the back to back episodes of this. I knew even as a kid that it HAD to be scripted or something in a few parts, but damn it was SUCH a good show back in the day.

Great! People are finally starting to realize that most TV shows were fake. Now they will have to admit that the videos on RU-vid are also fake, and the Shorts and TikToks are even more fake.

02:34 Look at the house number. It was 78655, but the show changed it to look like 78666. You can literally see the tape or whatever they used to change the last two digits. They wanted you subliminally notice it. The devil leaves his signature on EVERYTHING he touches, including this show. That's unholywood for ya.

X seemed like a decent guy. I met him when he rented out a party room at a sports bar I worked at around 2003. Was cool with me walking up to him to get a few pics and even stopped to talk to me in the parking lot when I got off work. Never once did he seem to not care or had acted like he had better things to do or places to be.

Oh my god. A TV show for MTV was...fake? I'm shocked. Side note, Of course they falsified information about the "winners", I wouldn't want my real name/face/address/what my house looks like out in the world after getting my ride pimped. That would be a liability nightmare for the producers.

I always had a feeling that this show was some sort of optical illusion.

New PimpMyRide hosted by Jake Paul 😂😅

Up Next: Why "Ride My Pimp" Never Happened....

Xzibit was really the cornerstone of the show. He was absolutely great as a host. I'm glad to hear all the contestants liked him, he seems super genuine.

Lock Up is exactly like that too as I’m sure all “reality” shows are. I was on a couple episodes of Lock Up Extended Stay when I worked at Santa Rosa CI in Florida. They filmed for a year and they would have us escort the same inmate from his cell over and over. They would tell inmates to “look emotional” or “remorseful” in their one on one interviews. I don’t know if they used the footage because I only watched 1 episode of it because the bs was too much to handle but they had me and another officer stand on the second floor catwalk and they told us to put our sunglasses on (even though we were inside) and look stoic and act like we were watching inmates down in the first floor. There were no inmates out of their cells at the time because we were in a close management dorm and they weren’t allowed out at the time because the film crew was there doing door to door interviews. My experience with that show is why I can’t stand to watch any reality shows on tv.

This is literally every single "Reality Show" on TV since the inception of "Reality Shows"

Even when I was a child I was just like... I'm pretty sure they just want a working car. Putting a fish tank in the dashboard just adds an entirely different set of problems 😅

This makes me appreciate Xzibit way more than I already did, he seems so genuine but was put in a weird position, wanting to promote his music career but instead just filming this

That’s actually good to know, I remember one episode that had like 6 TV screens in the drivers seat and always wondered how that was safe

Can we please talk about the REST of the comment Seth left (9:15) about the cotton candy machine? Strippers licking cotton candy off each other with Snoop??

I remember we watched this show as a family back in the day, and I'd get annoyed with my mom because she was constantly commenting on how stupid, unsafe, and unnecessary a lot of the changes they made to the cars were. At the time she was ruining my immersion and I thought she was just being an old person who didn't understand cool shit. But she was absolutely right. It's legit embarrassing looking at this shit now.

It was a reality show that turned out to be fake. What a twist of irony! By the way, thank you MTV for entertaining us in the 2000's.

dude yes, my brother was picked as one of the possible people to go on the show and declined once he found out how fake it was and that he would have to be acting and get no actual help with his car

Pan cyan cultivator here…. Love the knowledge. Fungus is so amazing to me

XZibit seems like a genuine and funny dude.

Till about 6:00 I was like "it was never that serious" only to hear that they took MONTHS to finish the cars, I feel so BETRAYED lol. I legit thought it took like a week, 2 at the most for them to finish the cars. The staged houses make sense because it protects contestant privacy and to protect themselves from any liability.

MTV from the get-go was Music Television, and somehow, they just lost their way. I was excited to see Xibit do Pimp My Ride, he's a great rapper, I knew who he was....but seeing him talk about it now and the contestants just makes me wonder how many shows back then were contrived... but there is some good TV left, I don't lose hope.

Okay, where do I start? We had, and still do have, Big Bertha the hot pink and white 1955 Chevy. We trailored her down from Silicon Valley to try out for the show. We auditioned in the parking lot at Santa Monica water company. We then found a cool storage that would allow us to put the car inside while the show made its decision. 3 weeks later we found that we were chosen. We drove down to Los Angeles to do the filming. The house where our car was belonged to a friend of one of the producers. We had, and still do have, Big Bertha the hot pink and white 1955 Chevy. We trailored her down from Silicon Valley to try out for the show. We auditioned in the parking lot at Santa Monica water company. At the time, the car was rust, turquoise and white. We then found a cool storage that would allow us to put the car inside while the show made its decision. 3 weeks later we found that we were chosen. We drove down to Los Angeles to do the filming. The house where our car was belonged to a friend of one of the producers. The way it worked is they put 3 separate contestants in 3 separate houses. They would tell contestants if they didn't get chosen to have their ride pimped, to maintain and they would be given coupons and gift cards for various automotive related things. When Xibit came to the door yes, my daughter had to do a few her reaction a few times because they wanted her to be over the top excited. No big deal. Then they gave us a rental car to drive back to the Bay area. She drove that up while I drove her car home. The rental was a four banger and totally gutless. Barely made it up 152. 11 days later the car was ready to pick up. We drove back to LA with the truck to trailer it back and the Mustang and the rental car. We stayed in a local restaurant while she filmed seeing the car for the first time since it was pimped. It took about 6 or 7 hours I think. She said she hang hung out with X looking at some pictures of a Bentley he was checking out in Oakland. Said he's a great guy and very funny. She had to fly back that night because she was committed to a dance show she was in. I cruised around in the car that night up on Sunset and around Hollywood. Really had a good time, people were flipping out over the car. The next day, we all left for the Bay Area. We were lucky that because we lived in the Bay, they gave us the car before the show aired on Sunday. We drove it around Silicon Valley a bit and people were flipping out so we told them to catch the show the next night. A few things did go wrong with the car but we contacted MTV and they made it right. There were no exaggerations or altered stories told. We were asked to leave the stuff that was in the trunk there. It was fine because it was representative of things that my daughter was doing at that time. We still have the car, we still love the car. Big Bertha has helped at many breast cancer events. We are very grateful to MTV and PMR for doing the car.

I don't know how anybody thought it WASN'T fake. The clues were everywhere in every episode.

Xzibit was a hell of a rapper and sadly this hurt his career. Almost seems like most people didn’t even realize he was a hip hop artist.

You should make a video on the continual rise of Roblox Thanos.

It was the same story with the UK version. A friend of mine had her Daihatsu Hijet van pimped. They did a custom wood grain theme throughout including the wheels which all flaked off within a few months of her having it back. They built her pet guinea pig a home on the dashboard which she had to remove because it restricted visibility. I’m pretty sure it actually failed its MOT (annual safety inspection) because of it! And when Tim Westwood (🤮) came with the crew to collect the/film the van they said it wasn’t in bad enough condition so they made it look worse by pulling one of the rear lights out and leaving it hanging by the wires. I think they removed the front bumper too. And then made Abi (my friend) drive it on the road like that so they could film it. Which I personally think was dangerous because the rear lights weren’t working. They also made her wreck the inside of the van to make it look worse and had her leave rubbish on the seats and floor. Which really annoyed Abi because she’s really OCD and it made her look like a slob on TV And they had the van for months. She had to rely on family to get to and from work which wasn’t ideal as a 27 year old woman living away from her parents. Oh and they got her to say she was a lot younger than she actually was! She kept the van for a long time but eventually sold it because things kept going wrong with it. Not necessarily things that PMR did but it wasn’t a very reliable van.

Pretty shocking to see the reality behind such a successful show. Your thoroughness in unearthing these details is impressive, certainly checks a reality check for the viewers.

The pistons used to lift the doors kept them from putting seat belts which made it dangerous. Never mind the fact they turned your backseat into a trash compactor

What is "Aircraft Remover" and where can I get some?

I read an article where a participant explained that stuff was done to the car that he never agreed to. Plus, literally nothing was done to the old engine etc. The car looked good, but underneath it was crap.

there’s a reason they only chose young 20 year olds.. they don’t want to screw over a rich 40 year old, that wouldn’t hold up well in court

I remember the contestant who had the 24" MTX Jackhammer subwoofer installed in his car mentioning that they removed it along with a TV screen that was installed after the reveal leaving him with a car half filled with a subwoofer box and nothing in it. Seems most of the extras they built around were yanked or were only allowed to be kept if the person paid for it. It really is depressing to learn how fake and destructive to participants the show was. Even Xzibit became nothing more than a meme for it.

That's why me and my wife didn't do say yes to the dress. They wanted us to purchase a $10k dress 🤣

9:12 bro how could you possibly ignore that second paragraph 😂😂😂

Having being a contestant is a "reality TV show" myself, I had to learn it the hard way that "reality TV" is almost close to never be "real". In one episode, the producers actually came to me to "ask" me to "act" as a villain, as they said: "you look like you can really pull off the villain character." I was forced to sabotage another contestant, & the contestant was also aware of that. Turned out, the competition was already rigged from the get-go, as the "victim" was already chosen by the producers & the sponsors to be the winner that year. Ever since that stint, I never trusted "reality TV shows" anymore.

I was in a fox kids show once in the Netherlands almost 30 years ago, it went completly the same way as described here, fake houses, fake parents, fake teams and fake reactions, but instead of adults it was with 10 to 12 year old kids thinking they are competing for something 😒 Couple years later I ran into an interview crew for a daily show about weird news called "man bite dog", they asked to tell your weirdest story and film it in a booth, after that they tell you a story and ask to tell that and they film that as well, take a geuss what is aired and what is not 😜 To be honost I know people want entertaining content, but it's harsh to learn that almost everything is faked for the sake of views

My siblings and I watched this show when I was in high school. It was the era when MTV stopped playing a lot of music and pivoted into the reality TV scene. We loved it! I was just a teenager and had no idea about car mechanics. I loved cars but had never worked on any (in my country you get your driver's license at age 18). I was also a big XZibit fan back then too. Thanks for this upload. Over the years I've owned around 10 cars - a mix of older and newer models. As an adult I understand that those crazy pimps were dumb and what they did to those cars were things I would not want done in mine at all. To a teenager, a candy floss machine in your car looked cool. Massive 22" wheels were also amazing. That was until I grew up and had to change my first set of tyres. I complained about 13". How the hell can a poor person afford to replace 22" rims? Yeah they look nice and shiney, but maintenance on those upgrades would have been nasty!

IDK why people think that reality TV is reality.

I grew up watching this and it was super obvious it was scripted. I didn't know people thought it was real. You have to remember this was during a time when you watched what was on TV and out of the 60 channels there was only 5-6 that showed anything I liked so when Pimp My Ride came on it was exciting. We didn't have unlimited options with things like YT and Netflix so it made bad shows seem good.

I remember watching PMR as a kid, and being so mind blown by the cars. Now that I’m 24, I now see through the deception of “reality Tv”. It makes me sad that once you learn the truth things will never be the same. Makes you wonder if tv specifically targets kids, or stupid people

What wasn't staged is the fact that Erin loves food. She ballooned up 3 times bigger than she was in her season 4 episode.

"As for Xzibit, he was lovely - high as a kite and lovely." Lmao

As a 10 year old back then i believed everything and thought it was cool as shit, now knowing it was all bs kinda hurts a lil ngl

I watched this show all the time as a kid, i remember my dad (who built a couple trucks and worked on cars) give absolutely disgusted and confused looks at the screen. This video explains everything now 😂

Eye-opening video but also sad. As a child at the time, I LIVED for this show. When it came on, everything else stopped. To think that it was fake... that's just awful.

It's nice to see Xzibit openly talk about it and sometimes laugh about it years later.

Xzibit may have been the face of 'Pimp My Ride' but it was the producers who faked everything. Xzibit shouldn't face any backlash at all...its shocking.

I always thought that this has to be fake because we never saw or heard of the reactions to the cars back in the winner's possession back in their home surroundings.

The best part was when Exit , i mean Exodus knocked on the door , their reaction was priceless ! Shout out to Westerners Coastal Customers

Isn't it funny how we've reached a point where the most fake shows on TV are called "Realities"?

Telling the contestants that it might be a production member telling them no knocking on the door to get a genuine reaction is genius. The actual excitement was a big part of the show.

A show that has cameras ? A director ? A host ? That is scripted?? Shocking !!

Wait? Nothing is real coming from the TV?

I used to love this show back in the 2000s and really did enjoy it. I found Xzibit to be a great host, and I'm glad to know that the contestants think he's actually great. Even back then, I knew that things were staged and such, but never knew it was this fake.

I can tell you it is 100%. My co workers son was the kid with the “gambling van”. She told me is was the most fake thing she’s ever seen in her life. They chose her son. Contacted him and scheduled him to bring the van to a random rented house “shoot location” and leave it there for a few days. Wasn’t even his real car, he bought it to be in the show. He then went there on the film day, show his fake reaction 100 times. Xibit wasn’t even there. After they shot pretty much everything. Xibit came and did his thing for 30 minutes and dipped. They got b role shots and called it a rap. They took his car and kept it for months. Finished it and called him. For more filming of reactions and to finish it all. Again Xibit showed up for 30 minutes and took off. After, they took half of his stuff off the car that was worth anything. Then what they left in there didn’t even work or broke after a few months. He was paid for being on TV and he sold the van. She said it was the most shallow and weird thing he’s ever done. As fake as it gets and a complete waste of time.

Let’s revisit this show Ok, find me a former contestant who gained 300 lbs and make her hold a snake during the interview 😂

This is kinda to be expected when we are talking about 90s TV show :D

This is actually the reality of nearly all “reality” TV…

I actually remember one of the main reasons of younger me loving Pimp My Ride sometimes wasn't even the car, it was Xzibit. Guy takes the whole thing seemingly well, but damn, to have so many things taken by the show AND getting the heat for the exposed truth.

Extra cigarette butts got me lol.

I had a Caddy once and was told to send it to PMR but I declined because I didnt want the word "pimp" associated with my car.

Xzibit seems like a really nice dude. Always liked his energy

Thanks for exposing the dark underworld of tv production! 😱

I always loved how they put displays even on the fck bumpers but never once opened the hood and do anything with the engine.

I've heard whispers similar to these stories back in the days from coworkers that constantly traveled to car shows. I thought what I heard was lies. 18 years later only to find out EVERYTHING I heard was TRUE !!!!!!

I was actually going to be on the show, but I went too boot camp and got the letter from the producers while there. It was a mixed blessing though because while I was there I learned that any customization of vehicles has to he approved if I intended to drive my kia on base and "Trunk televisions and excessive chrome" were explicitly prohibited lol

Imagine believing everything on "Reality TV" is real

Making you do a cartwheel for xhibit is wild

now i wasn't much of a Reality TV fan but i did enjoyed Pimp My Ride despite despite controversy i didn't know until years later! Xzibit had some of tha best improv dialog there is, though it's a shame they didn't do him nor tha contestants right behind tha scenes 😢too bad because me and my grandma god rest her soul loved to laugh at tha people who was pimpin' tha car with their improv jokes on tha fly

Back then It didn't matter if it was faked. It was just fun as hell to watch.