LOS ANGELES
Krissy Miller freaked out when she opened the door to her Huntington Beach apartment.
Xzibit, a rapper with tight cornrows and wearing a throwback San Diego Padres jersey, was about to repo her car -- temporarily. The host of MTV's unexpectedly popular reality show "Pimp My Ride," Xzibit has, for the past three months, been helping such down-on-their-luck twenty-somethings get a fresh start on the road to adulthood with a brand-new, grand G-ride.
The team from West Coast Customs in Inglewood, Calif., puts the finishing touches on Krissy Miller's 1960 VW Baja Bug for MTV's vehicle makeover show.
(Photos Jeffrey Marcus -- Washingtonpost.com)
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Miller, who had sent an e-mail to the show's producers, knew she was a finalist to be picked for the show. But she did not know what to expect when a producer told her someone was coming out to see her.
"I was totally, totally surprised," she says. "I just lost it. I felt I was going to cry. . . . Good things like that don't happen to me."
"Pimp My Ride" is a makeover show. But instead of presenting a couple with a new living room or turning an ugly duckling into a beauty queen, Xzibit and the mechanics at West Coast Customs trick out broken-down Hondas and scrap-metal Fords with shiny chrome rims, radioactive paint jobs, asphalt-thumping sound systems and video game consoles.
On this half-hour show, which debuted in March and airs Sundays at 9:30 p.m., no one is forced to eat worms or cow intestines. No one is maligned for perceived inadequacies. Unlike the average reality show, "Pimp My Ride" tries to boost a person's confidence.
A car, after all, embodies freedom and independence. A car says something about who you are, where you've been and, most importantly, where you're going.
The floor underneath the driver's seat of Miller's 1960 Volkswagen Baja Bug was corroded through. It looked more like the prehistoric cars from "The Flintstones" cartoon than the rough-and-tumble beach utility vehicle it was designed to be. The body featured three colors of rust, and the doors didn't work. The upholstery, if it wasn't torn or tattered, was mildewed and moldy. But Xzibit promised to return her beloved Bug with a new lease on its automotive life.
"This isn't 'fix my car,' " Xzibit says, disguising his hip-hop cadence with strait-laced over-pronunciation. "This is Pimp. My. Ride." The vernacular implies bling-bling to excess.
Standard features are scrapped in favor of over-the-top custom accessories. Why open a car door with a handle when you can have rear-hinged suicide doors that open backward with the touch of a button? Install a new stereo? Not when you can install a CD and DVD system with a flat screen mounted on the inside of each door.
The car becomes a metaphor for turning one's life around. "It's about wish fulfillment," says co-creator and executive producer Rick Hurvitz, who has also worked on reality shows "For Love or Money," "Married by America" and "Eco-Challenge." "MTV really tries to find deserving kids."
In one episode, a 21-year-old student who drove her ailing grandmother to doctor appointments had her broken-down '92 Honda Civic converted to a spaceship-like sportster with flip-up Lamborghini-style doors. Another episode features a young man with a kidney disease who once had to ditch his ailing hatchback on the side of the road and take a bus to his dialysis appointment.
The producers go through e-mails and letters and scout the freeways and neighborhoods of Southern California for young drivers with interesting stories and problematic cars.
