West Coast Customs

Early years; Pimp My Ride (1990–2007) According to two contradictory statements in the Los Angeles Times, West Coast Customs was founded in either 1994 or 1998 A young Friedlinghaus had gotten his custom vehicles featured on the covers of auto magazines by age 14, but he became frustrated with the tedium of dealing with multiple specialty shops, which led to longer times to build the vehicles. According to Entrepreneur, this frustration, coupled with his love for custom cars, was what led to his opening of his own shop. The company moved many times in its early years, but it was at its Inglewood location that WCC began to gain a reputation for quality, which caused celebrities to have their cars modified there. and this relationship helped him get contacts with other celebrities who were looking for custom automobiles. Owing to this, Music Television (MTV) offered Friedlinghaus the opportunity to have a reality television show filmed at his business with co-founder Quinton "Q" Dodson as the star and rapper Xzibit as the host; his acceptance of this deal led to the 2004 TV show Pimp My Ride. The show's format was that the Film producer at MTV would find typical Americans with junk cars, they would be given a short interview with Xzibit, Friedlinghaus and the WCC crew to determine their interests and hobbies, and then WCC staff would take their junk car and transform it into a custom car embodying the interests and personality of its owner. In 2004, CBS News reported that the show consistently ranked first place in the 12 to 34-year-old demographic for its 9:30 pm time slot. Owing to the popularity of Pimp My Ride, West Coast Customs was prominently featured in the 2005 street racing video game L.A. Rush as the car upgrade mechanism. According to the Chicago Tribune, Midway, the developer of the game, paid "handsomely" to be able to use the brand. In June 2005, Friedlinghaus took over the role of host from Dodson for the fourth season. As early as 2005, during airing of the second season of Pimp My Ride, rumors circulated that the location of the show would change and Friedlinghaus would part with MTV to host a show on a different network. others at WCC were not so subdued: Sean Mahaney, a then-employee of WCC, reportedly said "Most of the MTV people are not real car guys... They pay us to build the cars, so we do what they want even if it sucks." a Cadillac for Shaquille O'Neal (according to Friedlinghaus, O'Neal had already had 30 cars built for him by WCC by July 2007 and a Cadillac CTS-V for Justin Bieber. Brands built for included Chronic Tacos and Vans. According to Friedlinghaus, in an interview with The Press-Enterprise, the Great Recession affected his business heavily: he had to lay off half of the company's employees, orders decreased, and customers opted to have used cars repaired instead of buying brand new cars to be customized. In 2010, West Coast Customs designed three identical customized 1955 Ford F-100 pick up trucks that were prominently featured in the film The Expendables. One of these cars was for Sylvester Stallone, who sold it at auction in 2011 for $132,000. In 2015, WCC created a car by combining the body of a Ford Maverick and the internals of a Ford Ranger for another film, Mad Max: Fury Road. After the 2009 season, the show was renamed Inside West Coast Customs. Along with this change, it was also moved to Discovery HD Theater, which later became a different specifically automotive related cable channel, Velocity. In 2012, Jalopnik reported that the rapper will.i.am and Friedlinghaus organized a publicity stunt wherein will.i.am pretended that his car, a DeLorean modified by West Coast Customs at a cost of $700,000, was stolen. Friedlinghaus then pretended to find the supposedly stolen car. No police report was filed, nor were the police even called; Jalopnik describes the event as a "viral marketing stunt gone badly". In June 2013, Fox Sports Network took over the production of the show, dropping the word "Inside" from the show's name, and continued to produce new seasons of the show until 2016. In March 2017, the television show moved back to Velocity with a new season; Velocity then renewed the show in January 2018. On August 29, 2018, it was announced Six Flags Magic Mountain was in the process of constructing a roller coaster named West Coast Racers, which was designed in part by West Coast Customs. == Location changes ==

The company has moved several times in its history, across 3 different counties in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, each time to larger spaces. According to Friedlinghaus, the first shop was in Laguna Niguel, California, after which it moved to Compton, California, in 1998. The grand opening of the new facility occurred in December 2014. == Criticism ==

Mistreatment of employees As early as 2008, USA Today noted that Friedlinghaus's auto shop routinely had 60-hour work weeks and employees had "insane deadlines" working for Friedlinghaus, a "self-described micromanager". On April 23, 2014, after an investigation by the United States Department of Labor (USDOL), the company was found to have violated the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The government found that the company was not paying employees overtime or minimum wage nor keeping proper records. During the investigation, the government found that all employees were paid a weekly salary, regardless of how many hours they worked. Because employees were frequently coerced to work overtime, this resulted in a wage of $6/hour for some employees. Quality issues alleged , the same model and color of which were "pimped" on the MTV show. Jake Glazier's Buick Century In 2015, The Huffington Post interviewed three people who were participants on Pimp My Ride, one of whom had a vehicle that was "pimped" during the time that the location of the show was West Coast Customs, Jake Glazier (featured in Season 4 Episode 7, "Jake's Buick Century"). Besides problems caused by the long period of time that the vehicle was in the shop, for around one half of a year, Glazier claimed that the quality of the vehicle he received was also severely compromised. According to Glazier, when the muffler was removed, three "fake" exhaust pipes were substituted instead: these were used to make the engine sound much more powerful to viewers of the television show, but they made the car needlessly loud. He also claimed that very little or no mechanical work was done to the car, to the extent that he had trouble driving it home from the show's set. Due to all of the mechanical trouble, one month after acquiring the car from West Coast Customs, he sold it to MTX Audio for $18,000. According to Glazier, MTX did not buy the car to drive it, but merely to prevent it from falling into the hands of their competitors. Glazier further claimed that when it was time to receive the car, Dana "Big Dane" Florence intimidated him to act more enthusiastic for the cameras, saying "Listen, we put a lot of work into this. We expect you to be a little more fucking enthusiastic." to YouTube about her experience, and thereafter claimed that WCC threatened her with a lawsuit if she refused to remove it. after which point WCC uploaded its own video in the form of a scrolling text public relations statement. In the statement, besides denying that they had "talked down" to Paytas, WCC denied that its customization was the reason for the issues with her vehicle, claimed that the vehicle was late because she had changed what she had ordered "several times", denied that they had ignored Paytas as Paytas claimed, and invited Paytas to contact them with any further requests or complaints for an "immediate resolution," noting that they had already committed to fix the problem (which, though they wrote it was "unrelated to their services", they would do it anyway "as part of providing excellent customer service"). The company also noted its track record, but did not provide any concrete details. Firefall bus for Red 5 Studios In 2010, Chinese online game operator The9 Limited announced Firefall, an MMO first-person shooter to be developed by Red 5 Studios as their first game. The game would enter closed beta in 2011, and open beta in 2013. Mark Kern, a video game designer, was appointed by The9 as CEO of the new Red 5 Studios. As CEO, one of Kern's major tasks was promoting the game, and he chose to do this in part with a custom designed tour bus worth 3 million made to look like one of the vehicles in the videogame and to be converted into a game room on wheels. The customization of the bus was featured on Inside West Coast Customs in Season 3 Episode 4. While in the episode itself it is made to appear that the bus was on-time, arriving at the Los Angeles 2012 Anime Expo which took place between June 29 and July 2, in reality it arrived much later than anticipated, according to both then-CEO Mark Kern and a report by Tech in Asia. == Franchises ==

West Coast Customs has attempted to franchise its brand to other parts of the world with limited success. Closed franchises • On September 14, 2008, a franchise was opened in a converted factory building along Revaler Straße in Friedrichshain, Berlin, but it closed and declared insolvency less than one year later on August 14, 2009. Before its closure, professional boxer Wladimir Klitschko and musician "Evil" Jared Hasselhoff were customers. In 2011, following the closure of the business, the building was repainted. • Mauricio Hernández, a former employee at the California location hired just before the debut on Pimp My Ride, co-founded a Mexican franchise with Friedlinghaus' blessing in 2009. According to Hernández, who became the host of the show, the franchise was opened with a "high" fee paid to Friedlinghaus to use the brand. This is because on May 24, 2016, during airing of season six, Hernández announced that he was abandoning the "West Coast Customs" brand and company in favor of his own brand, PacifiCoast Customs. In an interview with TuningMex, Hernández stated that the new company had hired 20 employees, had an initial investment of MXN 2.5 million (), and would be based in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico, describing the name change as similar to cutting "an umbilical cord." In a separate interview, Hernández stated that when people in Mexico think of West Coast Customs, they think of him and not Ryan Friedlinghaus, thus hinting that he does not believe that the change in name will hurt business. and was online until March 13, 2012, but by April 13, 2012, the server hosting the site began returning a 403 error, and after November 7, 2012, the server hosting the website of the Japanese franchise went offline. In a 2013 video released by HP interviewing Friedlinghaus, the Japanese franchise's logo was displayed as , despite the fact that no such company existed at the time. An address was never provided, no Japanese media wrote about the opening of the franchise, and no further information about it has been forthcoming from WCC, so it can be assumed that the Japanese franchise never opened. • In 2010, Dana Florence traveled to St. Petersburg, for a question-and-answer session at the "Active Open Air Show Cars", according to The Village. A Russian franchise under the name '''' is likewise mentioned by the company, Open franchises Despite these setbacks, some franchisees have created successful businesses. • In 2007, Friedlinghaus announced a Dubai franchise to be owned by Al Ghussein Global Investments, which continues to operate as of December 2016. The Dubai franchise was opened with a fee of AED 18 million (US$4.9 million) paid to West Coast Customs to use its trademark. • On January 14, 2016, Friedlinghaus announced a further Shanghai franchise via a Facebook post. When the franchise opened on August 18, 2016, the event was met with substantial positive coverage by Chinese media, with articles appearing in the Qilu Evening News, and the website of Chinese television station Phoenix InfoNews Channel. The franchise is located at No. 218 Huajiang Road in Shanghai's Jiading District. == Footnotes ==