Distinction between RICE and Stang owners
 

I think the biggest distiction between ricers and mustang owners is that we build our cars for US (becaue WE like they way it looks, feels, runs) while ricers build their cars to PIMP their crap out......

It's all about how they look to others.....which is a stupid reason to waste money on your car....

Anyone agree with me?

Yes and no. If you asked them, they would say the same thing, but with the tables turned. It's all a matter of perspective. The mods they do may be influenced by others, but that really is true of most cars, not to mention that by the time they do the mods, they really do want them done. In other words, they may not create the ideas in their own mind, but they are sold on them themselves. This is really true across the board. My problem is with the choices they make.

Let me tell you a little story.

I have lived in So Cal since 1978, except for several months in '86 when I lived in Australia. I have been around Mexicans the entire time. Now, I don't have anything against them as a race, but I never could understand the choices they made when it came to their rides, and how they modified them. Take the uglies Chevy built, put spoked rims that would look small on a VW Rabbit on it, with smaller yet tires, white walls out, and then to top it off, add spacers behind the wheels so that they stuck out into traffic. They would paint them with flakes the size of a healthy Maple leaf, with a mural on the trunk, of their car sitting inside the manger during Christ's birth. Then they spend thousands of dollars putting hydraulics in them, and they remove the shocks, so the car bounces for days after running over a twig. This has never been even the slightest bit appealing to me. In fact, I would have a very hard time making a car look worse. Well, I was doing a year for cultivation back in '95-'96, and became good friends with a mexican bad-a$s, and one day we were discussing cars, and what was cool. I decided I had nothing to lose, and everything to gain, so I asked point blank; why do Mexicans do all these mods to their cars???

His answer was simple. "Because it looks cool".

The point is this: It's all a matter of perspective, and most peoples perspective on something like that comes from who they hang out with, or grow up with. While all my buddies liked V8 muscle, with tucked slicks in the back, and pizza cutters on the front, and they liked thier abortions on wheels, it was all for the same reason, in part, which was it was what we liked. Period. I know that sounds simple, but it really is true.

Take care,
-Chris

WOW, that was very well put PKRWUD!!!

IMO the ricers are building an image more than a car. Granted there is some well built and fast rice out there to, but they like everybody to think they are fast whether they are or not. I think a majority of the Mustang crowd is a lot more understated.
We prefer to let the lope of our cams do the advertising. ( even then I just tell people " No, no, its got a vacuum leak and a bad plug. Its all stock...wanna run?" )

Chris, that was simple?? :confused: ;)

i'll keep my explanation short and even steal from 929PhoenixSquid.

both sides build there cars for themselves

it's in the eye of the beholder. to them (true ricers), the "illusion" of speed is just as good for their confidence as actually owning a respectably fast car. we get our jollies out of our cars being pretty dang fast without needing to have that "look" of speed (some of you anyway :) )

by the way, the newest ricer mod craze around here is the blinking blue probe lights in the markers or headlights when the car is parked. these guys kill me heheh

I agree with everyone. My feeling is "to each his own". And then there are those guys that hop up and race riding lawn mowers. Some of those are pretty fast (50-60 mph, depending on gearing?). Some people's choice of what a car should be makes my stomach turn a little, but if it makes them and their friends happy, it's OK with me.

Rev

Rice and beef
 

I'll agree with PKRWUD (and I've stated this before on another thread) that it really is all in your perspective.

Muscle car people gravitate to American V-8 cars with a minimum of decals and crap. We hang around with people who think like us and have cars like us. We think rice is lame, at best.

Ricers do the same. They hang with people just like them in every way. They think their foreign cars are the epitome of 'kewl' and believe we're the weirdos, same as we think of them.

Sort of a form of tribalism in it's own way. The kind of thing that often ends up in a war when nations do it.

We however, fight it out on the internet, the street, the track and sometimes, one on one with fists - and worse.

It's weird the way a choice of a car and the way we choose to modify those cars could cause so much bad feeling between otherwise similar people, but here we are.

It's ultimately foolish to invest too much energy or emotion in this dispute as it has no resolution and no real meaning beyond the fact that more people are into cars than ever before, which is good, but unfortunately, too many believe the appearance of speed and 'muscle' equates with actually having it under the hood.

This argument appears as if it's going to continue for a long time and I'm actually getting past being annoyed by Ricemobiles anymore, I've seen so many. I don't associate with one person who owns such a car so I have little interest in the whole silly fad, except as an observer of the phenomenon.

Still, for many, in ten years or so we'll look back and wonder what the fuss was all about.

Most of the really fast imports I have seen are MUCH less showy (if at all) than the cars that typically get labeled "rice". I completely agree that most of those "euthansists" are doing it for the attention, same reason they rev their fart pipes at traffic lights, and for the same reason they do unsafe, flashy maneuvers down at 'the spot. I have yet to see a true import lover do junk such at this...