Bantan's New Mod - Y or N

[AlaskaVX]

This is a good description on what "rice" means, form a member of a local forum....


By: Tristan Aronson

What is a Ricer?

(Ricer: From the Latin word Ricarius, meaning to suck at everything you attempt.)

There are many various meanings for the term Ricer, Including both the driver, and the vehicle involved with the terminology. These definitions also vary in exact definition, but the over all meaning is still the same. It refers to a car that is all show and no go, or a person that is all talk and knows nothing about what they are talking about. But the most commonly meaning for the word ricer is in regards to a usually Japanese car that has been modified to make it look faster without any real gains to the performance of the car. In some cases, these visual modifications detriment the actual performance of the vehicle, and put it below what it actually was
in stock form.

Some of the more common modifications include, but are not
limited to: neon lights, and stickers for performance parts that are not actually installed on the vehicle, yet are there because they look cool. Another favorite thing to add is an enormously oversized wing on the rear end of a front wheel drive car which is meant to add down force to keep this 40 mile per hour monster on the ground. The wings typically look like something you'd expect to see on a Top Fuel Dragster, or a Boeing 747 aircraft. The likeness to a city park bench is also a common analogy to the
looks of several of the wings that are used on these rice mobiles.

Another typical modification is the addition of a muffler that is typically large enough to shove your leg into which makes more sound decibels than the motor makes horsepower. The large muffler in most cases will actually harm the performance of the vehicle, allowing too much exhaust volume to flow through the exhaust dropping the back pressure, and lowering the torque, causing acceleration to be slower.

And my personal favorite, the hideous body cladding kit that attempts to make the said vehicle look like a cross between a space ship, a race car, and something you'd expect to see in the movie Tron. 99% of the time these body kits are miss-matched in color, and it's cool to install your unpainted body kit without any intent to ever actually have it painted.

A set of chrome or odd colored Euro tail lights that And last but not least, is the rims, or wheels. Most ricers go out and
buy a set of Racing wheels, again often miss-matched in size or type so they can fit into the racer mentality. It's widely common for these vehicles to have only two aftermarket rims (usually on the front) and the stock rims ad tires on the back, minus the hub caps, because the steel rim look is considered cool. Ricers are not limited to Japanese cars only. Several domestic vehicles are also widely popular to rice out. Cars such as the Chevrolet Cavalier, and the Ford Focus, are also largely popular cars to be riced out. The most common vehicles used are cheap econo box cars that were never built to actually go fast. This is a common misconception though, because the drivers will speak as if their cars are literally the fastest things on earth, frequently claiming quarter mile times that are sub 12 second range, usually 10's, because running 10's like the bald guy Vin Diesel in the Fast and The Furious movie is cool.

Another widely popular meaning of this word actually refers to the driver of the said "rice mobile" and speaks of the mentality of this person. Ricers are commonly known as being clueless when it comes to automotive engineering. They literally know nothing, or next to nothing when it comes to vehicles and performance, or actual knowledge and ability of to make a car fast. Ricers are not confined to any specific ethnic group, or color, except stupid. Although, different racial groups are known to have slightly different styles from one another, and the artistic variation, and displays of miss taste is shown.

Ricers have only in the past few recent years started to become a cool trend to be involved with. It started just before the release and explosion of the movie The Fast & The Furious. I must admit, that movie was quite exciting to watch the first time when you saw it in the theater, and the urge to go out and race the family mini van was even coursing through me once I had finished watching and was leaving the movie theater parking lot. But some people saw all the flashy cars, and flashy chase scenes, and carried it out a bit too far, and into obsession. This is actually where the ricer explosion boomed into popularity. Every where you looked people were buying body kits for their cars, and Nitrous Oxide systems (popularly referred to as NOS "NAWS", by the ricer group), and sticking stickers all over their rides to try to be more like the exciting vehicles that were portrayed in the movie. The popularity of this movie definitely wasn't expected. It was sort of a modern day Mad Max. The acting was terrible, and
it was a cheaply produced movie as well. Yet the youth of America took this movie and made it a piece of their hearts, creating the ricer society that we now see today. Ricers are typically known for their stupidity, especially associated with driving. They seem to think that they're living in a video game at all times, and that zipping and darting in between cars and in and out of traffic while creating a major hazard to us all is a perfectly normal thing to do with their slow econo box cars. They can often be seen huddling around the popular hang out spot of choice on the weekends, usually a large parking lot where they can stand around and admire each others rides on a regular basis, and do crazy things like burn outs, sound offs with their humongous stereo systems and rev their ungodly loud, yet slow four cylinders. All this is usually taking place in the evenings while normal people are trying to sleep.

All in all the overall definition of a ricer that nobody will argue is that it's usually a small, non performance oriented vehicle that's big in ignorance. Take a couple stickers, some racing stripes, a gallon of yellow krylon spray paint, and a perfectly good economy car that you don't mind butchering; and you too can have your very own ricer. But keep in mind, even though it may be miss leading and other nicknames include "ricer burners", they don't actually run off of Uncle Ben's. But if they did, I think a bit of wild rice would probably increase the performance more than anything. Too bad they're all actually just slow front wheel drive cars that handle similar to a toboggan on a dry slab of concrete.

Example: