Hot Rod College

After 23 years of customizing cars, Ryan Friedlinghaus is ready to drive in a new direction. Starting early next year, Friedlinghaus will phase out much of the work performed at his Burbank shop West Coast Customs and transition the business into an academy teaching the skills needed to design and produce custom cars. It is a long-term investment that will enable Friedlinghaus to continue creating custom cars while grooming the next generation of workers in what he calls a “lost art.” “I am going to take this facility I built for the company and turn it into a teaching facility, which will benefit the industry and benefit us,” Friedlinghaus said. West Coast Customs makes custom vehicles, modifies existing vehicles and performs paint jobs, wraps and interior work for between $5,000 and $500,000. Annual revenue is around $9 million. The shop has modified a Ferrari 458 Italia for pop singer Justin Bieber and worked with hip hop artist and producer will.i.am to design The Monster, a two-door car built from scratch and operated with an iPad. Friedlinghaus hopes that graduates of the school will be able to create such cars in the future. The 48-week course will cost $40,000. The reason for starting the academy is simple: It’s hard to find qualified workers willing to work with their hands. Teens are not as interested in cars as past generations were. The auto industry has competition from social media, streaming videos and video games. And youth are not exposed to mechanical skills because high schools have eliminated shop courses. “The whole thought of working with your dad in the garage on a car has gone away,” Friedlinghaus said. “It is because technology is so heavily implanted in the youth.” Car mechanics, too, is a graying sector. Friedlinghaus himself may be young – he turned 41 in April – but he said that a lot of the best car customizers are retiring. A newsletter published this summer by the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence, a Leesburg, Va., trade organization, cited a recent study by the Automotive Training Managers Council that more than 40 percent of auto technicians are over 55 years old and that 70 percent are older than 45. “The problem is that the number of people currently graduating from technical education programs will leave the industry far short of filling all the vacancies created by the retiring experienced professionals,” the newsletter stated. The Specialty Equipment Market Association, the trade group for the vehicle after-market industry based in Diamond Bar, also did a survey last year on the job skills expectations of its members. Zane Clark, senior director of education for the association, said that members had identified custom installations and general labor as an area of great demand for employees. Ninety-five percent of companies in the after-market industry will need to hire employees with specific skills, and their challenge is not knowing where to look for those potential hires. In that regard, the West Coast Customs Academy would pay some dividends, Clark said. “Their academy can bridge that gap by providing students with real-world training in the key areas that make up the automotive after-market,” he added. Gary Sornborger, department chair in the automotive technology program at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, said that Friedlinghaus is headed in the right direction with the academy. Baby Boomers with big checkbooks want custom cars and restored antique and classic cars. Many cannot do the work themselves so they need to go to someone else, he said. “Right now at the body shops, three-quarters of the work they are doing is custom stuff,” Sornborger said. “There really is a demand.” ‘Pimp’ stardom Friedlinghaus, a Calabasas resident, founded West Coast Customs in 1993 with a $5,000 loan from his grandfather. He started in his garage and relocated to a 1,500-square-foot space with one other employee in Laguna Niguel. The shop moved around over the years – to Compton, Inglewood, near Los Angeles International Airport, Corona and then in 2014 to its current 60,000-square-foot space on Empire Avenue in Burbank. Along the way, the business kept growing and now has about 40 employees that staff the shop, museum and retail area. The shop has had its share of television exposure. For four seasons it was the location for MTV’s “Pimp My Ride.” Currently, the shop is featured Sunday nights on Fox Sports in show called “West Coast Customs” from Friedlinghaus’ production company. The company has had some licensing deals on apparel and other car-related products, and at one time had franchises in Mexico, Germany, Russia, Dubai, Malaysia and Japan. Friedlinghaus said he let those agreements expire after five years as he wanted to focus on getting the school up and running. A franchise continues in China because it was as existing customization company with its own employees. Finding talent to work on the cars was the biggest struggle those overseas shops faced, and Friedlinghaus said they would ask him to send his employees there. “People in Dubai don’t want to go in and see the local guys working on the cars,” he added. “They want authentic West Coast Customs employees – but I couldn’t provide them.” With the academy, Friedlinghaus will create a pipeline for technicians. He foresees graduates of the program going to other shops, starting their own businesses or returning to work for West Coast Customs, he said. Southern California has been a haven for vehicle customization and restoration going back to the heyday of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and George Barris in the late 1950s and 1960s. Shops still dot the San Fernando Valley area. Galpin Auto Sports, in North Hills, has been modifying vehicles – or Galpinizing them, to use its words – for decades. And in Sun Valley, Bodie Stroud, a well-known figure in the custom car community, operates BS Industries Inc. There are few trade schools that teach the needed skills for these shops. WyoTech, a trade school with locations in Wyoming, Florida and Pennsylvania, and Universal Technical Institute, which has campuses in Long Beach and Rancho Cucamonga and eight other states, are two examples. But those schools focus on certain aspects of customization work, such as fabrication or interiors. Broader programs include those at Pierce College in Woodland Hills and College of the Canyons, which teach general repair and maintenance. West Coast Customs Academy will stand out because it will train students on building an entire car from start to finish so they learn all the skills, Friedlinghaus said. “I think that is important to being a good customizer,” he added. Sornborger, of College of the Canyons, said he was not aware of any other training program similar to Friedlinghaus’ approach. At his school, the auto tech program has proven so popular that classes are offered six days a week and Sornborger said he is turning away students, including veterans. Graduates earning an associate’s degree from the program can get jobs at dealerships, but more and more are taking positions at auto body shops, he added. “Once they have a basic understanding of the nuts and bolts when they leave our program, they are a good pickup for some of these body shops,” Sornborger said. Hands-on curriculum In the West Coast Customs shop area, each step of the process has its own area – interiors, the wood shop (for making speaker cabinets, etc.), metal and carbon fiber fabrication, painting and research and development. Cars, on average, can be there for three to four days but others may stay longer, depending on the work. Under the academy program, 10 students will work on a car in one of the 10 bays. The system teaches them to work as part of a team, and as they proceed, the students can appreciate the art piece they are building, Friedlinghaus said. He will act like a college or university dean and help write the curriculum, emphasizing hands-on training over books because it is the best way to learn about working on cars, Friedlinghaus said. “It gives a different way of looking at learning, and you are having fun while doing it,” he added. “And it’s in a cool environment.” So far, Friedlinghaus has been keeping news about the academy low-key, other than a USA Today story that ran in May and posting a press release in August. The plan for the program is to stay at a manageable size, keep focused and make sure the concept works. He has heard from people both domestically and overseas who have expressed an interest in enrolling. Once the school opens and word spreads, Friedlinghaus said attracting the 100 students he wants to have won’t be challenging. “A hundred students are not a lot,” Friedlinghaus said. “We are not trying to go out and be aggressive.” In addition to teaching technical skills, the academy should make working on cars fun, Friedlinghaus believes. He’s been able to master the skills while having fun for more than half his life, and now wants to share both aspects with young people. Friedlinghaus hopes others will copy his model and so improve the industry.