Pimpmobile

A pimpmobile is a pejorative term used to describe a large luxury vehicle, usually a 1970s or early 1980s-model Lincoln or Cadillac vehicle, that has been customized in a garish, extravagant style.

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 purported wealth and importance.

These customized vehicles were popular with pimps, drug dealers, and gang leaders in the ghettos of large cities of the US in the 1970s and 1980s, especially New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles as a symbol of their power. By the 1990s and 2000s, the term was used to describe any large, extravagantly customized vehicle, such as a customized SUV truck.


The most status-obsessed customizers even added small crystal chandeliers for interior lighting and small 12 volt-powered colour TVs, VCRs, bar-size refrigerators, and, in a few rare cases, in which former hearses were converted into pimpmobiles, a small bed in the backseat area.