Jenny

I just don't get it. No matter how well they perform, they are still called rice... i just dont' understand, will someone please explain? Is a Camaro w/ blackouts and a windshield banner also rice?

Turbo-Jet

it is the lack of V-8's and RWD that make them easy targets for humor :lol:

import motors are so highly strung (read: well engineering) from the factory that hot rodding the engine costs big bucks. most owners do not wish to spend $3000 to gain 10 hp, and therefore opt for cosmetic enhancements.

yeah, a 4th gen Z28 with blackouts and a window sticker could look ricey, but hey ...it's got 275 hp stock. :cool:


[Modified by Turbo-Jet, 10:49 PM 11/12/2001]

parttime

i believe it's not the performance...it's the posing as though they can
perform that gets them the name "ricer"...so yes a

that does 0-60 in 10 sec is a "ricer" in my book :lol:

Jenny

sometimes i laugh at these festiva's and stuff too... but sometimes you gotta give credit, where credit's due :)

rainman69

I see a box stock Supra TT ... and I know that it hauls...

I see a modified Supra (tastefully, like my friends) and I know that at 400+ RWHP at 6000' it can school me on the highway...

But I see a 4-banger Honda with wings for "Downforce" and other crap...I laugh so hard I can't shift straight.

There is a difference between a car build for performance and a car made to look like it performs...

For example: Take a Honda, rip out all the engine and such. Fab a custom driveline that mates a 6-speed to a Mazda 20B TT motor (3 rotor, twin turbo) and put the stock body panels back on. Give it enough exhaust to perform but not look/sound crappy...that rocks.

But take a Honda and add a wing and stickers (good for 10 HP each)...and then you've got rice. :crazy:

Jenny

poopie, lets take it farther... Get a 20B, convert to single turbo. Mate it to an AWD 3000GT platform and put the whole thing underneath say a.... Hyundai Scoupe :D. :lol: My point is some cars deserve their respect... and saying "I drove a rice honda today" is not a fair assumption.That's all. I agree on you w/ the whole stickers deal :)

mrbeaubo

Here's the difference in my book.

While although all import cars are ricers in my book (Anything that doesn't have the roar and sound of an American car is a ricer), there are respectable ricers out there. A ricer with 40,000 dollars worth of enhancements, while still being a ricer, is a respectable ricer, and will not get called one by me in public. I still do not like the car, but I respect the owner for what he likes to do with his cars. The thing that does drive me crazy are the ones who grab a stock ricer, throw on a wing, paint it yellow or some other :U color (yellow looks good on a vette, dont worry), put 4 inch dual fart pipes on, and pretend to be fast. I have a kid in my school who has a FULLY stock ricer, but a BIG wing, and a yellow paint job, and always tries to act fast. That drives me crazy, I'll take him out on the highway any day, hell my family's Tahoe probably would :lol: (Not Really). That's just my opinion.

UltimateAlternativeWaver

Answer: They're not. I think most of us will (grudgingly or not) agree that an Acura NSX S-Type has a few things to show even the new Vettes. The Supras are unreal. I've seen Twin-Turbo Z-cars that'll suck my bumpers off. My old roomie's dad owns twin Dodge Stealth R/Ts (Mitsubishis) and I *know* they'll tear me apart.

As with everything, you pay for what you get. Out of curiosity I went sniffing around for 500+ hp 'rice'. And you pay about the same for it as you do for 500+ hp Vettes, give or take. A 350hp AWD Stealth will run you about what a tweaked LT1 or LT4 will, but Stealths seem to be going up in value since they were discontinued.

Fabled samurai Miyamoto Musashi wrote these words in the 16th century and they ring true today: "You should not have a favourite weapon. To become over-familiar with one weapon is as much a fault as not knowing it sufficiently well...I dislike preconceived, narrow spirit. You must study this well."

That said, there's this particularly boorish kid who lives in the complex I just moved out of. His ride's a mid-90's Civic hatchback, red, with the standard blue headlight and clear taillight covers, lowering kit, expensive wheels and tires he can't go fast enough to make use of...it has the stupidest-looking wing on the top because it's a hatchback and a body kit that I guess he thought looked good in white but it's unpainted and doesn't fit properly. Big sticker on the back that says 'CivicaliZed', LOUD (albeit still high-pitched) dual exhaust, and the crowning glory: strobe effects.

I saw this car every bleeding day. I would hear him go outside, disarm the alarm, start it up, run it for a while, shut it off and go back inside. He did this three times a night for a month or so. He seemed like a nice kid with an odd fetish, me being the type of person who has this terrible habit of giving the benefit of the doubt.

While moving heavy objects out to the truck I overhear him talking to his Girlfriend-of-the-Week, wowing her with his 2500+ word vocabulary. I rarely hear such homage to the f-word (probably because the kind of people I keep company with wield still more colorful and certainly more creative verbs). I mumbled to my roomie, who was helping me move stuff, "Should open a dictionary, him. Sounds like he's running low." I can only pray he heard me.

So that's my story, and it's why you will never get me to fully respect a Civic.

There's always a special place in my heart for Corvettes, they're my first love and you can never really break free of that. But it's unwise to count Japanese automakers out because of the likes of my ex-neighbor.

Jenny

Wow very well put... except the part about the civic :( mine ran 14.9's :D and i did all the install work myself from suspension a/f gauge, to nitrous... maybe you'll respect me as a person if not my car. :) but i must admit.. there's just something about the vette that i absolutely LOVE it is definitely in a class of it's own.

UltimateAlternativeWaver

If there's one thing that turns me off, it's attitude. I won't respect a fast car if the jerk who drives it can't spell 'naturally aspirated', let alone conduct a lucid and accurate discussion of automotive performance and some simple, basic, 8th-grade physics. Attitude is what separates r-i-c-e from r-e-s-p-e-c-t.

Tedardo

I agree, I hate the attitude most of the ricers have. Its like they know their cars can't hang and they have to take "cheap shots" like passing you when you have a bus in front of you or something. I just dont even waste my time with them anymore, but maybe when I get my own vette things will change :D

rambler323

This topic came up a while back and at first I was very much of the opinion that all eastern cars were "rice" of some degree or another. But then someone put up a link to http://www.riceboyspage.com

I went there and the site's webmaster has a very well defined way of describing what is and isn't rice. Basically, anything that tries to be something that it isn't (i.e. a civic being fast) is rice. Also anything that has mods on it that normal people think make the car look worse is rice. If you drive a slow car with a bunch of performance stickers on it...rice. If you treat a Vette like its a Camry you are guilty of rice. (It's not the car's fault that you suck.)

A Camry or Accord (or Neon or Focus) that is treated like the four cylindered economy/family car that it is shouldn't be called rice. But as soon as they put a fin on the back to put downforce on wheels that don't do anything or a gigantic coffee can tip on the exhaust it is defintely rice.

If it is done in good taste (seldom the case, unfortunately) then its ok. Otherwise its rice.

mrvette

Even a 500 hp civic is rice, it plainly doesn't matter what the rest is about...
show me a ricer that's still together, original, after 60k miles, and not blowing blue smoke like a WW2 destroyer.......
those kids think the car is indestructible, but eventually 9000 some rpm's get to it, and it fly's apart.....
rice/fwd go together, another reason....final drive ratios are nearly impossible to alter, no room in the tranny/diff cases....so get small diameter tires that stick WAY out of the wheelwells for better handling too, untill the hubs burn out from excessive loading.....
an 1800 lbs cheap tin box is just that, and all the performance junk in the world will not change that fact, even if it's going 10 second 1/4 times....
ever see posi on a FWD car??? rare as hell if ever....

GENE

spokewrench

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the word "ricer" evolved from "riceburner" hence
where they are made Japan, and assuming they use a plentiful resource "rice"
for fuel. I believe "riceburner" is old school circa 1980's, "boy I feel old"
SPOKE-

2001roadsterNBM

Any Cars can be called a "Ricer". Its a look. I've seen riced out Civics, Mustangs, and even Vettes. :U

Edzred72

Yep! The term "Riceburner" was coined in the mid 70's to describe Japaneese motorcycles. The influx of all the YammaHondaKawaSzukies into the motorcycle industry at the time, prompted the "Harley" boys to catagorize them as "Riceburners". The term stuck around and is now applicable to cars.
HISTORY LESSON CONCLUDED FOR TODAY .. CLASS DISMISSED
:cheers: :seeya :seeya :seeya

UKPaul

The "Riceburner" tag was being applied to *** bikes back in the '70's here. "Boy I feel older"!! :)
Paul

OneRedC5

I don't have a problem with the import scene. These cars look as goofy to me as the "lead sled" customs and street rods I loved as a kid looked to my elders. I think that most of us on this forum are a bit older and have our roots in big cube american muscle. So when I see some tricked out Civic with neons and strobes I just think, what the hey. As long as they're enjoying themselves and not driving too crazy there is no harm.

Paul L

Just an aside re a factory built rice car. Tiburon (as in Hyundai) is Spanish for "shark."

ZD75blue

a ricer is the one with all the stickers the rubber band tires on wheels that need an alignment. The spoiler is fit for the rudder on a cruise ship or a flap on a 747. And exhaust tips that are just that tips, you still have a pea shooter size exhaust pipe behind it. They have funky neon lights that go around the plate and under the car. The tube lights inside the car. Racing harnesses connected to who knows what, there isnt a roll bar or a harness bar. They say they have nos... but its really a fire extinguisher thats been chromed thats hanging in the front window.

They have scoops on the top of the car... who needs an air intake for air intake for the interior :confused:. The scoops that are glued or nailed to the hood... that are a different color. if you see this once but three months later and its the same except more stickers its kinda sad.

These are the people that do the drive by racing, you are at a stop light and you here an anoying weed wacker pull up and go 30 by you while you stopped reving. Then you know they tell their friends they raced and won.

Thats rice :boxing

ZD