Back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the term “Rice Burner" was used to refer to a Japanese produced sports car. Namely, the Datsun Z’s, RX7’s and Celica/Supra’s. The term was never thought of in my circle as an insult to Japanese people, but an insult from American (cubic inch) fans to underpowered Japanese cars. As time passed, the Japanese cars that were already known as competent road course cars started adding more and more power until they were the dominant sports cars.

Once Japanese cars became the dominant sports cars, the term “Rice Burner” could no longer be used as an insult because these little engine cars were kicking American car tail – not only up and down the quarter mile, but especially embarrassing them on the road (course). At this time, the term “Ricer” started to mutate into a disparagement of people who add junk to their cars that does nothing to add any performance at all, just to make it look bad-ass. Then of course, that became any car that added any non-performance parts at all.

Now that same thing is starting to happen here; we are seeing people who are adding ‘neon lights’, overweight wheels, and other junk to the X5. So, my question was, is there any ‘food’ based term that would be analogous? I mentioned ‘kraut’ as a non-suggestion for a name because that actually does have a negative connotation toward people of German ancestry.

I guess some people will take my original post as an attempt to insult Japanese or German people. I see it as a question of whether or not there is a food term that would fit. Tongue and cheek wise. I sometimes think people go too far with PC stuff, but generally let it slide, this however just seems silly to me to see this as an implied insult, but I guess we all have our views.

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2006 X5 Sport 4.4i