Not exactly critics’ choice

Surely you’ve seen ‘em on the road. Those cars with humongous rear spoilers. Or those with equally huge tailpipes (though some have taken to using race car-type mufflers these days). Or maybe those with tacked-on Euro-style center mounted antennas. Or imitation race car fuel filler caps. Some even slap on Mugen or Nismo decals on their cars when they drive neither a Honda or a Nissan. (Mugen and Nismo make performance parts for Honda and Nissan, respectively.) The list of such atrocious decor continues.

Interestingly, such tacky taste is not exclusive to our country. In the United States, some call cars like these "rice-boy cars." The term refers both to folks who have a predilection to drive around in cheesy cars – and to the cars themselves, which are almost always Japanese sedans. Yes, it’s a racial slur, since most of said folks are Asians – derogatorily dismissed as "rice-eaters," hence rice-boys.

A website – www.riceboy-page.com – collects and posts photos of these rice-boy cars for all the cyberworld to see. Photos are bunched together in categories, and each entry is accompanied by a short write-up on a car owner’s particular fault, and usually a plea for any rationale why things had to be such. Most entries are taken by the site’s owner himself, Bryan Minsok Hong, but a number are also submitted by browsers.

The site is divided in a few sections, from the usual message boards, chat rooms and responses to rice-boy FAQs and rice-boy definition. But the most interesting, of course, are the photo collection sections. The Rice on the Street and Hall of Shame section features various rice-cars, categorized on the level of tackiness and utter bad taste.

Cars with mutliple headlights and foglamps are collectively called as best-visibility awardees. Those with wrong decals are bunched in the identity-crisis label, while those with loud, gaudy sticker graphics get their own. Still, cars with the biggest spoilers and tailpipes merit special attention.

But the best examples – or as the site put it, "the riciest of the ricey" – can be found on the Hall of Shame. Here is where the top awardees from particular categories are listed.

The typical rice-boy, Hong said, can be identified by his car and what he does to it. Generally, a rice-boy will start out with a car that is not exactly a high-performance car, and attempt to "fix it up," usually by putting on aftermarket wheels, lowering springs and an exhaust system with a large exhaust tip. And of course, the oversized rear spoilers.

Hong said that most of the modifications do not actually enhance the performance of the car. Rather, rice-boys are only concerned with giving their cars a high-performance image, though most modifications hurt than actually help.

There’s a lot of truth to it too. As Hong noted, installing the wrong type of springs or wheels with a different offset will not improve a car’s handling one bit. And seriously now, can your car corner at 150 kph or is capable of a 200 kph top speed for it to require such huge spoilers?

Where Hong seems to be at lost for answers, though, is when people ask him what’s wrong with trying to make a car look fast, even if not actually making it fast at all. After all, people can do to their cars as they please; it’s well within their rights to do so. It’s their money and it’s their car. It’s democracy at work. And in a democracy, everybody has a right to make a fool of himself.