About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Rice burner

Encyclopedia : R : RI : RIC : Rice burner

This does not cite its .
You can Wikipedia by introducing appropriate citations.
A "riced" Dodge Neon, including clear taillights, an overly large spoiler, missing paint on the rear bumper, and showing neglect to keep the stock body clean.
Enlarge
A "riced" Dodge Neon, including clear taillights, an overly large spoiler, missing paint on the rear bumper, and showing neglect to keep the stock body clean.

Rice burner is a pejorative used initially to describe Asian-made—specifically Japanese-made—motorcycles and automobiles. Many variations have also been used, such as rice rocket for Japanese sport bikes.

More recently, the term rice burner, along with the prefix rice, has taken on an alternate pejorative meaning for an automobile that has been modified to give impression of high performance, but does not necessarily have any high-performance capabilities. This practice is in contrast to the "stealth" or "sleeper" style of automotive modification, where a vehicle may have major perfomance modifications, but the appearance remains similar to that of a stock model.

In some circles, or even entire regions of the U.S., the term rice car is used exclusively to describe Asian-made vehicles, modified or not. However, as more types of cars began being used as a platform for modification, including German and American-made cars, use of the term rice is no longer restricted to Asian-made vehicles. The most commonly modified cars are sport compacts, but the term can apply to any class of vehicle, including trucks.

Variations of this usage include, ricer, rice car, rice cooker, and rice mobile. As an adjective rice, riced out, riced up, and ricey can be used. Ricer can also refer to the driver of said car, in addition to rice boy (a reference to the usual age demographic in question). Ricing is the present progressive of modifying a car in the described manner.

Contents

Origin

The word "rice" refers to the fact that the vehicles the term was originally applied to were of Japanese origin, and the fact that rice is a staple food in East Asian cuisine. Its earliest usage is still in question, but examples include the term referring to Japanese motorcycles in the early to mid 1980s, and muscle car enthusiasts' jokes that cars from Japan used engines powered by rice alcohol. The climate of the East Asian region provides optimal growing conditions for rice, and rice has historically been a staple food source in Japan and other Asian countries. As such, this word has associated itself with that racial group in the same way pasta is associated with Italians (e.g. using the term "pasta rocket" to describe Italian made sports cars such as the Ferrari or the Lamborghini).

Though in the 1970s and 80s the Japanese did produce many popular performance cars and performance versions of existing cars, many of them were never exported to North America. Not until the late 1980s and early 1990s did imported performance parts began filtering through the west coast, as well as more performance oriented cars, such as the Toyota Supra. Many factors, such as parts being interchangeable, the low cost of obtaining a used import car to start with, and networking and e-commerce via the Internet all allowed the expansion of the practice of modifying a low-cost compact car. This was in direct contrast to American car production around the same time, where there was little widespread performace aftermarket for any widely-sold domestic compact or economy car. The focus was instead on full sports cars of the day, such as the Ford Mustang or Chevrolet Corvette, or on classic muscle cars.

When properly modified, economy cars and compact cars made for capable sporting cars because of their light weight and the increasing availability of low-cost parts. However, as legitimate sporting and racing with such vehicles increased, so did more recreational use of these vehicles. Drivers with little or no automotive, mechanical, or racing experience would modify their vehicles to emulate the more impressive versions of racing vehicles with mixed results. Detailed examples are below, but the most pointed out instances are aerodynamic attachments to a car, or loud and unnattractive sounding exhaust systems.

By the late 1990s, many of the recently produced import sports cars were no longer being sold in North America, such as the Toyota Supra, the Mazda RX-7, and the Mitsubishi 3000GT. The release of the PlayStation racing video game Gran Turismo also acquainted North Americans with the idea of replacing key components of the car to improve performance, as well as exposing them to performance versions of compact cars that were never made available.

The movie "The Fast and the Furious" released in 2001 continued this exposure and expanded the visibility of automobile modification to the general public, and may have resulted in an increase in the number of cars being modified. Two sequels of the series have been released since, with similar focus on modified vehicles.

As American car companies began to follow suit with performance versions of older economy and compact car platforms, such as the Dodge SRT-4 based on the Dodge Neon, a similar phenomena could be seen trickling down to used American cars of the last generation. The term "American rice", "domestic rice", or "wheat burner" has been used to describe American-made cars that have been modified as described, but simply calling them rice is also commonplace.

As with any term based around region, race, or culture, some people claim "ricer" is an ethnic slur. Its widespread use socially and on the Internet to describe any driver, no matter their race, and any car, no matter its country of origin, tends to detract from that point of view.

Characteristics

Poser Mobile, a parody of commonly associated mods done by ricers.
Enlarge
Poser Mobile, a parody of commonly associated mods done by ricers.

"Ricing" (a term usually not used by the modifier himself) a vehicle is meant to emulate the aesthetic work of independent automotive car tuning companies who modify more than just appearance, and to give an appearance of greater ability than the car actually has. Ricing is generally looked down upon amongst people who perform engine tuning and other performance racing modifications.

Common aftermarket modifications in this style can include:

A Honda Civic with "Ricer"-type modifications
Enlarge
A Honda Civic with "Ricer"-type modifications

Not all automobiles with any of these modifications are rice burners, nor are all merely cosmetic. Some drivers who opt to perform one or a few of these stereotypical ricer modifications to their car will argue that they did not intend to make their car appear fast in the first place; their goal was simply to improve the look of their vehicle for purely cosmetic purposes. However, some modifications by themselves are almost immediately labeled as ricing. For example, the large and loud exhaust tip and/or dual cat-back exhaust systems are synonymous with rice-burning, even if no other modifications are done to the car.

Not all the above modifications are necessarily useless from a performance standpoint. A properly designed body kit can improve aerodynamic performance by increasing downforce, which increases available traction. Carbon fiber is extensively used in racing and high performance cars because of its high strength to weight ratio. Formula 1 cars have used carbon fiber chassis and bodywork since the 1980s. Among production cars, the Enzo Ferrari and Porsche Carrera GT both feature bodies made almost entirely from carbon fiber, and Time Attack competitions in Japan sometimes feature cars with mostly or all carbon fiber bodies.

To contrast proper engineering with ricing, replacing a steel hood with an aftermarket carbon fiber hood typically saves 15-25 pounds. When looked at as a percentage of the total vehicle weight, this usually amounts to less than 1%, and is unlikely to result in any measurable performance gain. Spending a significant amount of money on conspicuous performance modifications that do little to actually increase performance is the very essence of ricing.

Identity crisis

An identity crisis can occur when an individual adds decals, badges or other identifiers from one type of vehicle onto another vehicle of the wrong type, or to a vehicle that does not contain the modifications or special attributes indicated by the accessory. Examples could include an Impreza WRX sporting a VTEC sticker, or a Honda CR-X with a TRD (Toyota Racing Development) badge. Honda vehicles, as an example, can often be observed with examples of identity crisis between different versions of the same models, with Type R badges on sedan Civics (the Civic Type R is only available in two-door hatchback form) and older Civics made before the Type R was available.

American cars can also suffer from this. A Ford Mustang may have a GT badge, indicating it has a V8 engine, but the car may only have a V6.

Rice burners in popular culture

The charactor Wingo from Cars is commonly seen as an exaggerated rice burner parody.
Enlarge
The charactor Wingo from Cars is commonly seen as an exaggerated rice burner parody.

See also

References

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: