Moreover, Glazier and Dearinger claimed that certain aspects of their stories were embellished by the program for the sake of ratings. In Glazier’s case, they had his car littered with cigarettes when he revealed that his grandma was a smoker.
As for Dearinger, the contestant who appeared on the sixth season, his vehicle was made to look much more wretched than it actually was before filming took place.
Intimidation
Glazier recalled her experience to HuffPost, "I remember it very clearly. Big Dane was a very big dude, and he put his arm around my shoulders, kind of walks me around for about ten minutes."
Glazier went on to say that his words were a bit scary, and what he said was, 'Listen, we put a lot of effort into this project. We expect that you would be a little more f****** enthusiastic.'"
Deceptive Timelines
Besides the fake reactions, which we can only expect from reality TV, the timelines of the episodes were also deceptive. From watching the show, we might have thought that the vehicles were in the shop for about a weekend, but the vehicles were usually in the warehouse for several months.
This led to additional issues for the contestants as they had to finance a rental car for themselves until MTV reimbursed them for it sometime later.
Fat Shaming
We could argue that Martino got the worst of it, as he elaborated on his experience on Reddit. "I know that I'm overweight," he admitted. "But the show made a big effort to make me appear like a lazy, fat person by telling the camera that I kept candy hidden in my car, making me look bad."
Then to make matters worse, the crew determined it might be a good idea to give him a cotton candy machine in his trunk!
Now That's Just Mean
In his interview with HuffPost, Martino told them that at the time, he just went along with it because it was an exciting experience and didn't question anything. He knew it was mean and done to get more ratings, but he didn't feel like he could object to it as he was a contestant on the show.
On second thought, the show probably had the idea to use a cotton candy machine, so why not make it seem like it was meant for the full-bodied contestant.