'Pimp My Ride' car customizer moves on to his next gig

CORONA, Calif. -- Spend a little time around West Coast Customs and you'll learn the price of fame.

Insane deadlines. Routine 60-hour workweeks. A demanding, want-it-now celebrity clientele. And a self-described micromanager CEO who doesn't mince words — including expletives.

"It's a lot of pressure," says Ishmael Jimenez, 36, an upholstery expert and one of the handful of managers who work for CEO Ryan Friedlinghaus. "I can make no excuses, because West Coast Customs has a worldwide reputation."

That reputation is borne of an automotive customization business that gained national fame thanks to its outrageous hip-hop designs and appearance on the MTV show Pimp My Ride.

For four seasons of that show, West Coast Customs transformed broken-down jalopies into outrageous, urban-oriented rides with wild paint jobs, humongous chrome wheels and ground-pounding stereos.

Friedlinghaus, probably the most heavily tattooed CEO in America, says he yanked the shop's participation because he thought Pimp was too gimmicky with its ugly duckling-to-swan format. Nowadays, he's more stoked about his latest ventures and another TV series that the staff did for cable channel TLC. He says that show Street Customs, now out of production, was a more realistic portrayal of how a custom car shop really operates.

The crew does things that would make most car owners wince. Like sawing the roof off a Land Rover to install smoked glass or turning the off-road luxury vehicle into a two-door, instead of four-door model. Those tasks, along with fancy paint, wheels and all the glitz, were accomplished in about a month.

At any given moment, the shop is working on about 20 vehicles. Recent jobs have included cutting the roof off NBA star Shaquille O'Neal's $145,000 Mercedes-Benz S600 to make it a convertible. The artists and technicians also are adding speakers, paint and goodies to skier Bodie Miller's 1992 GMC Typhoon SUV. These vehicles share garage space with a Dodge Nitro SUV, Ford F-250 pickup and a vintage 1950 Mercury, among others. Each is getting its own unique makeover.