Car culture, just another thing that I follow alongside motorsport in general. Me being a car fan in the first place actually stems from motorsport. When you talk motorsports, you talk about the cars or bikes that race each other at speeds of over 320kph (200mph). You might talk about advanced engineering, technology, aerodynamics, safety, handling, and the sheer brutality of those machineries. It's the adrenaline that hooked me up with this culture. The sensation of driving as fast as humanly possible, while still have to maintain a level head going at those speeds.
Consequently, as a result of a thriving car culture, car owners resorted to modify their cars to a specific purpose, depending on its usage on the road. And these modifications are done with three things in mind: practicality, usage, and purpose. Take a look at the differences when building either an off-road car or a drag racing car. For the former, you want high ground clearance, four-wheel drive, good set of suspension kits, and precise handling. For the latter however, all you need is raw power and fast accelerations down the line. Every build is tailor-made and none of those builds are one and the same. Each and every car is meticulously tuned and adjusted to the preferences of its driver.
But there are some of them who are also part of the culture who don't modify their cars to suit all of the above, instead focusing only on exterior appearances of their cars, and those guys are called "ricers". The term "RICE" in relation to the car modification culture is actually an acronym for "Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancements". As the name suggests, these guys are modifying their cars for the purpose of making that car to look like a race car, but in reality, it's more like anything but one. The polar opposite of this particular build is the one called a "sleeper". These cars are high performance cars with unassuming looks. It is possible that a sleeper could take its form of a sedan, or even an estate car or a minivan of some sort. Those who are labeled as a 'ricer' is that one guy who puts so much aftermarket parts to the point of rendering his own car unrecognizable. Think about a Honda Civic EK9 fitted with a massive exhaust and cheap aftermarket body kit made of plastic.
It's fairly easy to spot a ricer in a crowd of car enthusiasts. They are mostly drive Japanese cars, mostly either a Honda, a Mitsubishi, a Toyota, and a Nissan, with most of the vehicles being either a front-wheel drive, a car with automatic transmission, or the combination of both. But these days, even European or American manufacturers are not spared from a ricer's treatment. As per what I said, it's easy to find a ricer by looking out for a car that has flashy paint job, stickers plastered all over the place, big aftermarket body kits, hood scoop bigger than it should be, lots or fake air vents which mostly done with chicken wires, big spoilers or rear wings that serves no purpose at all, a pair of Lamborghini-esque scissor doors, big and loud "fart can" exhausts, lowered suspension kits to the point of the actual body kit to touch the ground, and an extreme amount of negative cambers, not to mention other cosmetics like a full sound system designed to put everyone within the radius of a kilometer on permanent deafness. Seems like these guys got their influence by watching The Fast and The Furious movies too many times than they can recall. These cars are designed as the "all show, no go" cars with emphasis of flashy exteriors.
Ricers have a nasty habit of overestimating their own ricemobile's performance capabilities. And this is reflected by their tendencies to boast about all of their sense of styling (or lack thereof) and claiming that their cars would actually beat a top of the range supercar. And they sure love the attention they get, even in the expense of their own unrecognizable turd box of a car, or their severe ignorance on how to properly modify a car in the first place. The reality of the matter is these "ricers" are nothing more than a disgrace of the car community.
To put things into perspective, tuners modify their cars to enhance the performance, and usually prefer little to no exterior modification, aside for aerodynamic purposes. Most tuners would maximize the horsepower, handling capabilities, and safety features to suit their purposes of creating a high-performance vehicle. Ricers on the other hand, are deluded to thinking that by slapping some stickers and some aftermarket logos would make their mule-powered rickshaw faster with only standard engine and parts. Tuners also take weight-saving seriously, as excessive weight inside a car can only lead to reduced performance. Ricers don't see this as a problem, by putting massive subwoofers and audio systems, which in turn, slow their cars even more. Hell, a mere sticker when being put on a car could cause the car to gain even a milligram of weight. If you watch any car meet videos or have been to one yourself, there are some demonstrations of some stunts like burnouts, drifts, quarter mile drag race, and the like. These are done by specially trained drivers on closed roads. While ricers, due to their attention complex, always down to do those dangerous stunts on open parking spaces, even open roads. And the results are sometimes either comedic or catastrophic. Doing an excessive burnout on a front-wheel drive car with its nose on the wall? Congratulations, you have blown your engine. You want to test your luck on a drag strip? that soapbox must have been so slow, a snail would beat you to the line. You want to test your drifting skill with that stock wheels with excessive weight? You'll just turning around in circles.
In short, ricers are nothing but deluded individuals who think that by putting on excessive stickers, cheap aftermarket body parts, a larger-than-life exhaust, and big audio system would actually enhance their car's performance features, when in reality, they are turning their daily drives into a big pile of brick wall with the pace of an old snail. It's not going to go any faster, nor it would be the safest vessel of transportation. In the end, these ricers instead built a deathtrap with excessive weight on it.
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