LOS ANGELES -- One of the best-known names in the world of customized cars is planning to open an academy, hoping to lure students who want to learn how to transform an ordinary car into a piece of rolling art.
Ryan Friedlinghaus, whose West Coast Customs became a TV fixture through the old MTV series Pimp My Ride and other shows, says the timing is right. Car customization is becoming a lost art.
"The trade is dying," he says. "There is definitely a want and a need for it."
These days, West Coast Customs is based in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank, in the heart of the area's entertainment industry.
Friedlinghaus says he got the idea of opening a academy when he encountered difficulty in hiring talented workers, and discovered others in the industry were having the same trouble.
But he says he isn't planning to teach single areas of customization. He wants students to learn the entire gamut. He envisions a year of courses covering every phase of customization, from metal fabrication to paint and electronics. It would also cover car suspension, wheels, tires -- even window tinting and installation of those sometimes wild car body wraps.
He says the goal would be to turn out graduates who will be able to transform cars into the kinds of head-turners for which his shop is known. It would go far beyond the basic skills needed for the average body or upholstery job. Students would be "coming out with a skill so they are way more valuable" than just those needed to get hired in the average body shop, he says. He says he has not determined how much he will charge in tuition, but hopes that he can make the program eligible for government tuition assistance.
He says he thinks his grads won't have trouble finding jobs and starting salaries can be as much as $75,000 a year.
He says too many teens and younger people these days aren't thinking about skilled trades jobs.
"Let's get these kids to work with their hands," he says.
