A 1989 Ford Taurus that was done up for a 2005 episode of Pimp My Ride just showed up in a Southern California junkyard. The custom paint and accessories actually weathered the last two decades pretty well, but I guess nothing lasts forever. Which reminds me, dang, 2005 was more than 20 years ago.
Over the weekend, this new entry to the Wilmington, CA, Pick-Your-Part yard inventory got shared to the RADwood Facebook group. I poked around a little and, yep, that is absolutely the same ’89 Taurus sedan that was modded in Episode 37 of Xzibit’s MTV show in the summer of ’05.
The car got a custom gauge cluster, wacky doors, and of course, an intricate paint job. I can’t say I remembered any of that—I’m pulling the details off xzibitcentral.com. It’s interesting that it appears to still be wearing a West Coast Customs license plate in the boneyard. I wonder if this thing had been sitting in storage on some Hollywood garage since the show aired.
Here are the pictures the yard uploaded for its inventory listing:
I thought about making a joke about Xzibit’s official fan website here, but I got nothing on Mr. X to the Z. I was a preppy suburban kid at the height of his popularity, so naturally, I used to blast his music with zero irony (and sometimes I still do). In fact, I’m going to shake my office walls with “X” again after I finish this post.
All that said, since I tripped and fell into this little rabbit hole, here’s some more context on “Rashae’s 1989 Ford Taurus.” The show episode lore was that “the owner had aspirations to be a Hollywood stuntwoman.” That made me curious—did she ever become one?! Cursory cyberstalking revealed that featured “car-owner” Rashaé Minor has had a few minor roles since Pimp My Ride aired, but most of her acting credits predate the Xzibit-show appearance.
She actually does have two stunt credits: In the 1998 Nic Cage movie City of Angels and the 1996 Schwarzenegger classic Jingle All the Way. She must have been a stunt-kid.
At this point, if you’re thinking, “wait, she was already an actress, was Pimp My Ride even real,” well … probably not. Without actually making a statement here, I think it’s reasonable to imagine that some of the contestant-characters and their cars were arranged by the show’s producers rather than plucked from the general public.
But who cares—the core of the show (let’s do over-the-top customization treatment on wretched jalopies) is still funny. And that’s all that show was ever really supposed to be.
As for this Taurus, it hit the yard inventory on Saturday, so I bet the cool stuff has already been harvested by the time most of you are reading this. But if you’re local to Wilmington, it might be worth the $2 hand stamp to go check it out! One of those doors would make a neat piece of garage art.
Know the whereabouts of any other old TV cars? Drop me a line at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.