Reading comprehension?

Question

When hunching myself answering a reading comprehension task, I was particularly unsettled with one question, which I will show you right now:This is an excerpt from *Susan Orlean's "Life is Swell"* - 1998 in *Women Outside* ... **On our way to the video store, the girls told me they admired my rental car and said that they thought rental cars totally ripped and that they each wanted to get one.** My car, which until then I had sort of hated, suddenly took on a glow...Question:In the highlighted portion of the passage, the phrase "they thought rental cars totally ripped" suggests the girls:A. Assumed rental cars broke easilyB. Considered rental cars were appealingC. Were surprised that rental cars were newD. Determined rental cars were uglyNow, it is obvious that D is easily eliminated, and that left us with A,B,C. The official answer is B. Nevertheless, I thought that A and C were also very sound too. This is because we can infer that the girls' presumption or prejudice of rental cars was that they would be all ripped, in the other word, in bad condition. As a result, I want to have someone clarify this situation for me. Am I wrong because it is a literal question instead of an inference question? Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

The answer is B because "ripped" has a positive connotation in the context of the passage. The clause before the girls called the car "ripped" states that the girls admired the car, and the clause after it says they all wanted one. This implies that "ripped" in this case is being used as slang for something that is wanted or admired, i.e. something that is cool or, in a similar case to 90's slang "ill." If the answer was A, they wouldn't want one because a broken car would be undesirable, so we can eliminate that answer. We can also eliminate C since there is nothing in the passage to indicate that the girl thought the rental car was new. Therefore, we are left with choice B, which matches the statements the girls made in the passage.

I hope this explanation helps!