Pimpmobile

A pimpmobile is a large luxury vehicle, usually a 1960s' or 1970s' or 1980s'-model Lincoln, Cadillac, Buick or Chrysler vehicle, that has been customized in a garish, extravagant and kitsch or campy style. The style is largely an American phenomenon. Aftermarket features or modifications such as headlight covers, hood ornaments, expensive stereo systems, unusual paint colors, and shag carpet interiors were used by car owners to advertise their wealth and importance. Once considered a pejorative, these customized vehicles were popular with pimps, drug dealers, and gang leaders in the ghettos of large cities of the US in the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, especially New York City, Kansas City, Chicago, Oakland and Los Angeles as a symbol of their wealth and power. By the 1990s and 2000s, pimpmobiles included any large, extravagantly customized vehicle, such as a customized SUV truck.

Pimpmobiles became part of popular culture when they were depicted in 1970s' blaxploitation films that targeted the urban black audience with black actors and soundtracks of funk and soul music. Blaxploitation films tend to take place in the ghetto, dealing with pimps and drug dealers, often with stereotyped depiction of blacks. Heavily-customized pimpmobiles appeared in blaxploitation films such as Super Fly, The Mack, and Willie Dynamite as well as mainstream films like Magnum Force, D.C. Cab, Escape from New York, and the James Bond movie Live and Let Die. In the 2000s, they also appeared in the 2002 comedies Austin Powers in Goldmember and Undercover Brother. The conversions became popular with Americans of all races, and several companies manufactured kits to convert late-model cars to pimpmobiles.

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