In the years following Pimp My Ride’s stint on MTV, there have been a number of exposés detailing how the show’s souped-up jalopies were not all Xzibit hyped them up to be. Despite that mood-killing reality check, let’s be clear: all of those cars — the AMC Pacer with a juicer, the Chevy truck with a recreation of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, even the Dodge minivan with the built-in badminton net — rolled out of the shop in better condition than when they came in, considering they had one tire in the junkyard already.
If you’re starting with a worthless car, any updates are a step in the right direction. But what would happen if West Coast Customs — the Burbank, California shop that worked on the cars in the first four seasons of the show — started with a six-figure car?
You need not wait for an answer, as West Coast Customs just unveiled a highly modified Rolls-Royce Wraith that is causing a bit of a stir, partially because they’ve taken a $300,000-plus land yacht and made it almost unrecognizable, and partially because the vehicle is reportedly owned by none other than Justin Bieber.
That’s according to YouTuber Gordon Cheng, whose channel is called Effspot. In a video released last week that is now making the rounds on car blogs, he details the experience of driving up next to the custom Rolls and locking eyes with a person he believes was Bieber. He spends a few minutes in the video getting shots around the car and trying to figure out what, exactly, he’s looking at. There are hidden door handles, no side mirrors and brand new bodywork that covers the wheels and stretches around the entire vehicle. At one point, it’s likened to a futuristic Cruella de Vil car.
A few days later, West Coast Customs announced the build themselves (though they didn’t confirm that it was built for Bieber) and revealed that it’s styled after the 103EX, a 2016 concept car from Rolls-Royce. And the technical work here is commendable, to be sure, especially the seamlessness with which the shop has blended its own design with the Wraith’s original style. It looks like a stunt car straight out of the movie Tron: Legacy.
But in the end, what we have here is a meticulously crafted automobile dressed up in a sci-fi Halloween costume, not unlike the dozens of builds from Pimp My Ride. This is the car version of Travis Scott’s Batman outfit; just because a lot of time, money and effort went into it doesn’t always mean the end product hits the mark. And this isn’t the first time Bieber and West Coast Customs have teamed up on goofy rides, so don’t expect it to be the last, either.
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