I remember growing up with Xzibit hosting Pimp My Ride, which I would typically watch late at night in bed when I couldn’t sleep because my pre-teen self had one too many Mountain Dews that day. Today I found something both worse and better. I discovered the UK version of the show.
By now you probably know the truth about the American Pimp My Ride (which, a very weird and regressive name for a show, even at the time, but that’s another conversation). Xzibit claims the show made him broke. People previously featured getting their rides pimped said it just made the cars worse. But the best aspects of the show were the fun personalities involved.
And then there’s the horror show nightmare that is Pimp My Ride UK, featuring the most average British person possible with the sharpest, most evil eyebrows I’ve ever seen, trying to act “hard” for the camera while talking about things like a Morris Minor.
Speaking of, here’s the episode featuring a Morris Minor:
“But nowadays, I’m a big dog,” he says.
The host, English DJ Tim Westwood, looks like somebody who drinks Bovril at rugby league games. He looks like he asks you “what are you looking at” when you sit across from him on the metro, when you certainly were not looking at him. He looks like he drives an E46 M3 with mismatched wheels and threatens to kill you if you talk negatively about the SMG transmission.
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He’s probably actually a nice guy, I don’t know. People make you do weird things when you’re on television.
Anyway, this episode, and I assume the rest of the show, is full of lines like, “I’m a big dog, and I like cars that bang in your face.”The host also says the contestant’s Morris Minor should have joined Elvis in his grave.
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He also tries way too hard to make shapes and motions with his hands.
The show follows the exact same layout as the American version, with the shop gang walking us through the changes they’re going to make. A young man with the worst sprayed-on red hair dye tells us he’s going to lower the Morris to “kick it into the 21st Century.” Another young man wants to put a printer in the glove box. “Biff” is going to turn the boot of the car into a “special surf zone” for Bethan’s upcoming honeymoon.
The end result is certainly something, but I don’t really hate it.
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They sort of leaned into the surfing honeymoon thing and created a car that reminds me a lot of the old California surfer wagons. Bethan seemed happy enough as well, even if she did have to put up with the real-world Austin Powers calling her “baby” every five seconds.
I’m very happy to discover I have a whole new world of Pimp My Ride to seek out and enjoy. I’m pretty sure this host is probably on the list of most grating personalities in Britain somewhere, but I can look beyond that.
Maybe I’ll move on to Pimp My Ride Brasil next.
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