[1] Owing to the patronage of celebrities such as Shaquille O'Neal and Sean Combs,[1] along with appearances in the reality television programs Pimp My Ride and Street Customs, the company has gained a high degree of notoriety and has become a multimillion-dollar[2] business.

[13][14][15] However, the company has also at times been accused of missing deadlines,[16][17] using aggressive sales tactics,[17][18] and producing low quality and potentially unsafe customized vehicles.

According to two contradictory statements in the Los Angeles Times, West Coast Customs was founded in either 1994 or 1998[1] by auto enthusiast Ryan Friedlinghaus.

[25] 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.

Cars and expectations for the final product would arrive on Monday, and employees had until the following Friday to complete a project, sometimes necessitating twelve hour work days.

[20] Owing to the popularity of Pimp My Ride, West Coast Customs was prominently featured in the 2005 street racing video game L.A.

[27] In a 2007 interview in the Los Angeles Times that Friedlinghaus gave after the Pimp My Ride relocation from West Coast Customs to Galpin Auto Sports, Friedlinghaus credited Pimp My Ride with helping him build his brand, but said that he felt that his focus on building cars for the television show damaged his relationships with his other customers.

Because MTV was no longer footing the bill, all episodes of the new series were about cars built for people who could afford the high cost of customization.

Some notable vehicles built for celebrities in Street Customs include one for Carroll Shelby,[33] a Cadillac for Shaquille O'Neal[34] (according to Friedlinghaus, O'Neal had already had 30 cars built for him by WCC by July 2007[27]), a modified Range Rover for an unnamed member of the royal family of Dubai,[35] and a Cadillac CTS-V for Justin Bieber.

Along with this change, it was also moved to Discovery HD Theater, which later became a different specifically automotive related cable channel, Velocity.

[43] 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.

[1] After the first season of Pimp My Ride, the company moved yet another time to a larger location in El Segundo, California, near Los Angeles International Airport that had a room specifically for the filming.

[1] After Pimp My Ride left the company, it moved to a location in Corona, California, in preparation for the Street Customs television show.

[54] Furthermore, until 2011, the company attempted to skirt minimum wage and overtime laws by classifying their on-site exclusive long-term employees as independent contractors, which is illegal in the United States.

[19] During the episode, the team at West Coast Customs were told that Glazier had recently graduated from a degree program in audio engineering, so they installed an MTX Jackhammer high fidelity sound system (with accompanying decibel meter and warning light, in the words of Xzibit, to stave off deafness) and a record player inside the dashboard.

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.

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.

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.

[19] Despite the problems he faced with the vehicle, and with the caveat that he appear on a show with the same format as Pimp My Ride where MTV paid for all work done until the car was delivered (and for some afterwards, depending on who one believes), Glazier said he would happily participate in the program again if given the chance.

After the second deadline was missed, she uploaded a vlog[18] to YouTube about her experience, and thereafter claimed that WCC threatened her with a lawsuit if she refused to remove it.

[17] December 17 became the deadline that the company would ultimately keep, but when Paytas came to pick up the vehicle, she found that none of the electronic components worked, including those that are required for safety in the United States, such as turn signals, headlights, and windshield wipers.

[17] To her complaints about these issues, Paytas claims that the company told her to drive the car home and then to the Mercedes-Benz dealership from which she bought it to ask them for an in-warranty repair.