Anatomy of a Ricer
LINK:
http://www.nissanperformancemag.com/february04/rice/
By Bryan Mayo
I recently saw something that I've been seeing a lot of lately: loud, visibly busy, and deceptively aggressive vehicles pseudo-racing through traffic in a futile effort to recreate their favorite Fast and the Furious scene. In this case, there were three vehicles, each sporting their own racing theme. The leader of the pack was driving a lime-green Neon SE, dropped, and sporting a huge metal spoiler. From what I can tell from his decals, the middle guy was driving a Ford Mustang Type-R (and nicknamed “American Thunder”). And I couldn't really tell what the last guy was driving because his car's chronic bouncing, presumably due to the uneven road surface, distracted me too much.
I watched these guys slowly race from one light to the next; making so much noise from their exhaust that I couldn't even hear my radio playing. I couldn't help but ask myself what exactly possesses a person to decorate their vehicles this way, and more importantly how can a person be convinced that committing these vehicular fashion faux pas is a good idea. So I did a little research, put pen to paper and worked out an easy guide that might help you avoid becoming considered a ricer.
What Exactly is a Ricer?
First, there is usually a clear distinction between a racer and a ricer but the line that separates the two is very fine one. Where a racer has a car that is really fast and tastefully modified, a ricer usually takes a slow, average looking car and puts exaggerated, often gaudy racing accouterments all over it so that people will think the car is much faster than it really is. At any rate, what exactly makes a person a ricer? A ricer is simply any person who attempts to make their car appear as something it is not (and uses tacky means to accomplish this goal.) Putting Type-R, VTEC, or MOPAR decals on a Toyota Corolla is an excellent example because the Toyota Corolla doesn't come as a type-anything, VTEC is a Honda ACRONYM, and last time I checked, MOPAR parts only work in certain Dodge and Chrysler vehicles. Essentially, you are a ricer if you go to great lengths to make your normal everyday road car look fast, as opposed to actually making it fast.
Type R or GTR emblems on anything other than a Type R or a GTR,
Is Rice!
7 Steps to Recovery (or Avoidance)
1. Fortunately, being a ricer won’t shorten your life expectancy, give you tooth decay or require you to take handfuls of aspirin to numb the pain. As far as your physical health goes being a ricer is completely benign. If being a ricer is harmful at all, it is to your social stature. This damage comes from the less than flattering observations made by other people who can see you trying way too hard to be cool. But don’t worry, there are steps that you can take to recover from, or completely avoid, being a ricer. Just follow these seven easy-to-follow steps:
Learn the difference between TASTEFUL and TACKY. Don't litter your lowered Kia Rio with aftermarket sponsors stickers, bolt on an absurdly large bare metal spoiler, and install the largest muffler you can get your hands on. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing and you have to learn how to figure out when you’ve crossed that line.
Unless you're building an extremely high powered race car or plan on entering the Indy 500, a three foot rear wing is,
yes you guessed it.. Rice!
2. Don't drop your car too low. Lowering a vehicle can be a great way to help simultaneously improve the look and function of your vehicle's suspension, but lowering it too much can be just dangerous. If your car is lowered too much, you'll find it hard just to drive your car out of your driveway. Even worse, if you lower it improperly, you might find that it bounces so easily that you can't drive more than a couple of miles per hour without rattling your teeth out of your head.
3. If you're going to visibly modify your vehicle, do it all the way. Don't partially modify your vehicle without painting your new body-parts. Either wait until all of your body-parts come in and accomplish the altering and painting all at once, or don't do it at all. You may know that your baby is a work in progress but until that work is done, your car just looks goofy.
4. Keep your muffler size to a somewhat normal size. You don't need a muffler with a tail-pipe the size of the U.S.S. Missouri's main guns to make your car appear aggressive. Aside from the big wing, there is no better mark of a ricer than the unbelievably oversized muffler on an otherwise stock vehicle. Keep the size of the muffler reasonable and even more importantly under the car!
5. Avoid the Modified-Stock Madness! If you are going to modify your car, do it all the way. Don't place a large spoiler on an otherwise stock vehicle because it will make your car look ridiculous. If you are going to do body work, you might as well go the whole nine yards. The safest modifications you can make are a set of REASONABLY SIZED rims (17 to 18 inch MAX) and a 1 to 2 inch drop kit. These two modifications alone can make a decent stock vehicle look spectacular. Do you know how much braking power it takes to stop 22 inch chrome DUBS? The rolling unsprung weight is immense.
6. No Homemade Body Kits. Saving a buck is certainly understandable, but making your own body kit out of Bondo, cardboard, or paper-mache is not a good idea. Homemade body kits say “I'm cheap, have no sense of style, and can't refrain from assuming people like you are just too slow to notice.”
7. Shiny wheel covers will never, ever, be confused with real rims. Perhaps as unsettling as homemade body kits, wheel covers that masquerade as authentic rims simply reek of bad taste (the worst wheel cover offenders are the ones that pose as the new spinning rims.) Decent wheel covers are fine, but the super shiny, five star rimed wheel covers wouldn’t fool a blind man.
Finally
If you ever think that you might be viewed as a ricer, just take a good look around and gauge your modification ideas to the cars you see every day on the road. Looking distinct should be the goal of every auto enthusiast but you should never try to be so radically different from everyone else that you push way past the bounds of curious oddity and go straight off the cliff into riceland.
Anatomy of a Ricer
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