A clean 300HP import built buy someone with some taste in automotive styling is just as cool as any other car in my book, maybe even more so because they attempted to make something that was nowhere near fast in the beginning very fast in the end, and succeeded. Good example of a clean looking car IMO:
Very clean car, just how it should be done. Clear side markers, lowered down, nice wheels, tinted windows, thats just about anything any car needs to look good. Body kits are OK if they flow with the car (most dont) as are aftermarket hoods as long as they flow (most dont). If you're changing factory lines you have to be careful to keep the car looking like everything belongs IMO...
Clean lines, clean paint, clean wheels, car lowered down (a little too much IMO though), clear side markers, wing is borderline, this is about the limit on what I call a clean car, but nowhere near rice yet...
Now you take that same car, no matter whether it's making a ton of power or not, and you slap on a bunch of graphics, a big wing, taillights that look worse than the stock ones, and just make it look silly then you got yourself some rice, which isn't cool. And rice isn't stock or clean looking imports. I've seen plenty of Mustang, Camaro, and Firebird rice as well as Focus rice and Neon rice. You can rice anything out and its a reference to bad automotive styling IMO. Example:
Flat out bad taste, and it's borderline rice. Body kit is ugly and doesn't compliment any of the factory body lines at all. All it would take to make it full blown rice would be a sticker on each door that said "ACURA" or "INTEGRA" and some vinyl on the side that makes the paint look like it's tearing away.
NOTE: All pictures used are from
http://www.teamintegra.com I wanted to have three pics of the same car at different levels of cleaness/riceness and I knew where to find Integras that ran the range of what I was looking for since I have a buddy with an Integra thats on over at TI.com.