Bye MTV - you pimped my Ride!
01/07/2026
Sure, the music videos were the main reason why we set up MTV on our TV sets as teenagers in 1987 - freshly hooked up to the cable TV network. After the music channel went on air in the USA in 1981, music clips flickered across our screens almost non-stop thanks to the launch of MTV Europe in the UK. We had already had a taste of this since April 1983, when Peter Illmann brought the music program "Formel Eins" to the TV screen on Monday evenings on the third television channel.
But MTV quickly overtook the youth program. At parties, for example, when it was "storm-free", it helped to simply leave MTV on the flickering box - that way, part of the mood was already taken care of.
Cool old cars
Of course, I was always interested in the cars from the music clips; at the beginning of "Formula One" it was always old junk cars that made up part of the stage decorations. And some cool car always looked good in the music videos. But these were always just a by-catch, discovered by chance and - if not yet known - then researched and identified by me. But who on MTV still remembers the Wrangler ad with Jimmy Hendrix's Soundtrak and a cab driver who simply abandons his Caprice Classic in the middle of New York traffic, gets on the subway and takes a flight to Miami? "Don't be just a Number!" Or who didn't want an old Harley-Davidson after the guy from the Levi's commercial climbed down the stairs and took his jeans out of the fridge? Seen it all on MTV...
But the big one was: "Pimp My Ride"!
Levi's commercial on MTV: Muddy Waters' soundtrack, a beautiful woman, sexy male legs and at the end an old Harley riding towards the horizon
Your car determines who you are
No, I hadn't heard of a rapper called Xzibit before, but that didn't matter when a TV show called "Pimp My Ride" first aired on MTV in 2004. Poor young people were supposed to have their junk cars upgraded and restored, in other words "pimped". This TV show was a sensation, even if the conversions, carried out by West Coast Customs, were often dreadful and the question often arose as to whether everything was above board.
Xzibit has just "pimped" another lucky one by handing over the keys (Tyler's Chevy El Camino E13 S4)
When the rust holes in the roof edge of the 1958 VW T1 were sealed with aluminum plates, rivets and lots of filler, it was pretty clear what I thought of the technical condition of the cars.
Nevertheless, Pimp My Ride was cult and burned itself into the cortex of my brain.
AMC Pacer "pimped" on Pimp My Ride ( Jessica's AMC Pacer, E1 S4)
The core message seemed obvious to me: a great car makes you a different person. The actors, let's just call them that, were all hoping for a better start in life thanks to their pimped car. At least that's how it was presented, as many of them sold their four-wheeled TV star as soon as the terms of their contract with the show's producers had expired. As many as three of the 72 or so cars are said to still be in the possession of the protagonists at the time. It makes sense that the last car to be pimped was a 1970 Cadillac hearse. Pimp My Ride ran for six seasons from 2004 to 2007.
The end of MTV
At the same time, the show was also an expression of the development of MTV. The channel was showing fewer and fewer music videos and more and more reality shows instead. After all, the MTV Music Awards were probably the most important prize in the industry for a long time and "unplugged" only became a household name thanks to the channel's concerts of the same name.
However, MTV ceased broadcasting in Europe on January 1, 2026. In a world of YouTube and music streams, the channel has simply become superfluous.
