Or black bonnets, if your prefer.
Seems to be a ‘ricer’ thing, here in Houston: an all-white car, usually a Honda Civic or Scion Tc, but with the hood painted black or primer gray, and usually with black mag wheels. Kinda the automotive equivalent of a plain white T-shirt. Anybody got an idea what this is about? Is it supposed to suggest that the hood’s been replaced with one made of carbon fiber to make it lighter, or something?
Maybe it is to reduce glare, just like in many airplanes that have a matt black area over the nose in front of the cockpit.
Often the original body panel has been dented or mangled and just replaced with a panel from a vehicle that was painted a different colour. Black-on-white has never stood out as a more popular choice, leading me to believe that whatever colour used is whatever colour they could find at the time. It’s also possible the owner (if it is a ‘ricer’) has a spare “parts car” painted a different colour from which body panels have been interchanged to give an interesting visual effect.
Of course, there are probably several reasons for varied body panel colouring, and these would be just two.
The idea is to replace the stock hood with one made out of carbon fiber to reduce weight. This website (the first I found in Google) has hoods, doors and other parts made of carbon fiber: http://www.carbon-fiber-hoods.com/enter.html
The ricers though will either cover the stock hood with carbon-fiber looking sticker, or paint it matte black.
Either way, I find the whole idea of replacing the hood questionable. Most modern car hoods are made from aluminum, plastic or a combination of the two. I can literally lift the hood on my car with my little finger. I guess if I were to replace my hood with a carbon fibre one I would save at best 500 grams of weight.
Flat black hoods go way back. Some of the first ones I remember (no idea if they’re really the first ever) were in the late 60’s. Plymouths and Dodges with a 440-6 bbl got a lift-off flat black fiberglass hood from the factory. I had a '67 Pontiac Tempest with a fiberglass hood that was flat black because that’s the way it came and I couldn’t afford to have it painted. As noted with carbon hoods, we got fiberglass hoods because they were much lighter. Plus, you’d remove the hinge springs, and if you were using a lift-off setup you’d even remove the hinges.
I thought about that, but there seems to be something important about the rest of the car being plain white, as I almost never seem to see cars of any other color carrying black hoods.
Also, re: the possible ‘carbon fiber’ look, I’m pretty sure (without actually having knocked on one) that these are the stock hoods, repainted. I agree that if they really were lightweight parts, any performance gain would likely be negligable.
Anyway, just a curious little subcultural thing, but unless someone who actually owns one of these vehicles happens to post, we are probably just guessing here.
Most of the ricers I see hardly have any matching panels to begin with. I know a guy with a silver VW beetle who paid big money to have the hood, roof and deck lid painted black. he said it would be the new style and he was starting it. That was about 5 years ago and it’s the only car I’ve seen like that.
Metal hoods weigh a whole lot more than that. Our housemate recently swapped the stock hood on his car for a carbon fiber one, and it’s collectively a good 50+ pounds lighter.
Not only is the hood panel itself lighter, but you also jettison the springs or gas struts that make your hood feel lighter and the strong hinges those springs or struts are attached to.
Of course, I have no idea if 50 pounds is really significant or not, especially since he doesn’t race it. AFAIK, he just likes the look. By the way, his car is silver, not white.
50 pounds lighter? :eek:
What car was that? My car’s hood (Citroen C4) doesn’t weight 50 pounds to start with! And since it is so light, it doesn’t need gas struts or extra strong hinges. Of course, it is so flimsy that I wouldn’t dare resting a heavy object on it because that would leave a huge dent.
How many ricers are raced anywhere but at the lights, I always take it to be a kudos thing.
Just seconding Dog80’s answer. Ricers often replace the hood with a lighter one. This is a rather simple way to increase efficiency without being a gearhead–which frankly mostly ricers are not.
Primer gray seems to be a popular color choice.
Jeez, Dog, that’s not a hood on that Citroen…it sounds more like someone just stretched some aluminum foil across the top of the engine compartment! But seriously, we used to go to drive-in movies and have four or five people sitting on the hood of the car (it was cooler than sitting inside the car in the summertime). I just went out and weighed the hood of one of my cars: just under 60 pounds. (The hood is off the car, I weighed myself and then weighed again, holding the hood.) This hood has no insulating mat, which would add about 10-20 pounds to the weight. I think the guy who says he saved 50 pounds by replacing his hood was perhaps a little optimistic, but I’d guess that a 25-30 pound weight saving would be possible.
One old drag racing rule of thumb is that you’ll be a tenth-second faster throught the quarter mile for each 100 pounds you get off the car. For races that are won by a hundredth of a second, that’s good stuff. I’m not a racer, but a friend with racing experience thinks it’s even more useful to him that he breaks fewer parts when the car is lighter, as the drivetrains shocks are reduced along with the reduced mass that’s being accelerated.
And yes, I agree with the folks who are saying a lot of the stuff we see out there on the street is just for appearance: it’s a lot cheaper to look like a racer than to be a racer. The ricers aren’t doing anything new; we used to lust after stupid parts in the JCWhitney catalogs when I was in high school. (Remember using Gabriel Hi-Jackers to get that drag-racing rake on your car?) We discovered that bigger is not better when we put a Holley 4-bbl on a friend’s car and it began to bog out constantly. It took a while, but we finally figured out we needed a *smaller *carburetor - IIRC, we removed the 750 cfm and replaced it with a 500 cfm spreadbore.
If you guys don’t mind me dragging my ignorance into this - What’s a “ricer”?
My cite is* the box of junk in my garage. Want me to send you the parts? 
Unfortunately, he sold the original hood, so we can’t weigh it, but the box of hinges, struts, bolts and latches is fairly heavy.
It was originally (and still is, to a lot of folks like me) an insult used by Domestic Snobby types to disparage on guys working on making Japanese imports go fast.
I have a sub-compact car and a carbon fiber hood would be substantially lighter. Not sure where you’re getting a 1 lb savings unless your car has a plastic hood.
I am inclined to remove the hood and weigh it. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow 
Possibly they thought the white hood would mark them as Klan members.