Mark Zuckerberg had his Porsche Cayenne turned into a one-of-a-kind family minivan.
Ryan Friedlinghaus, CEO of West Coast Customs and “Pimp My Ride” alum, was behind the custom build.
“That Porsche was probably one of the most technical, craziest ones we’ve ever done,” he told BI.
The mind behind Mark Zuckerberg’s custom Porsche Cayenne minivan told Business Insider the car was one of the most technically challenging builds he’d worked on to date.
In an October Instagram post, Zuckerberg showed off the custom car that was built for his wife, Priscilla Chan. Pictures and a video showed a Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT, a $200,000 SUV, stretched and retrofitted with automatic sliding doors often seen in minivans.
“New side quest. Priscilla wanted a minivan, so I’ve been designing something I’m pretty sure should exist: a Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT Minivan,” he said in the post. “Threw in a manual GT3 Touring to make it his and hers.”
For his request, the Meta CEO turned to West Coast Customs, a California auto shop that has become iconic for its loud and elaborate custom car work for high-profile celebrities, including Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton, and Shaquille O’Neal.
The owner of West Coast Customs who was personally responsible for bringing Zuckerberg’s car dream to fruition is a West Coast icon in his own right: Ryan Friedlinghaus.
“That Porsche was probably one of the most technical, craziest ones we’ve ever done,” Friedlinghaus said, speaking with BI from the LA Auto Show, which promotes the future of the auto industry. West Coast Customs collaborated with CART Department, an automotive arts platform founded by the New York City mega-collector Larry Warsh, to debut an exhibit of custom-made cars at the auto show.
Friedlinghaus said one of the biggest challenges in creating a family-oriented Porsche minivan was installing the sliding doors.
“Originally, it was supposed to have one door, and they wanted two doors, and they wanted it to open like the Toyota Sienna minivan,” he said.
Friedlinghaus added that working with a car from a luxury company such as Porsche was always a challenge since loyal followers of the brand typically like to adhere to original designs.
Zuckerberg’s minivan is likely to be one of a kind on the roads. A Porsche spokesperson previously told BI in an email that the company had a “special wishes” department that allowed customers to build their own Porsche to their “precise requirements.”
“To date we’ve not yet been asked to create a minivan!” the spokesperson said.
Friedlinghaus started West Coast Customs in the early 1990s with a small shop in Orange County, California. The shop was thrust into the national spotlight in the early 2000s when it served as the main hub for MTV’s “Pimp My Ride.” The show refreshed people’s beater rides with outlandish car mods such as a hot tub or a pool table in the back of a truck bed.
West Coast Customs built a custom carbon-fiber car for the producer Will.i.am using the chassis of a Tesla Roadster. West Coast Customs
“It’s definitely been a journey,” Friedlinghaus said. “I started in a 1,500 square foot shop in Laguna Niguel in ’93 and then grew it into the 60,000 square foot shop that we now have in Burbank.”
Friedlinghaus said that his Burbank shop was mostly on “cruise control” and that his main point of focus for the past three years had been West Coast Customs Academy, a nonprofit organization that provides students hands-on training for customizing cars.
Friedlinghaus said he first envisioned the academy as a paid program in which students would pay tuition. But the founder said he turned the academy into a free training program after he felt the students who couldn’t afford the tuition had a higher appreciation for the work and opportunity.
“I feel like that’s going to be the legacy of my brand, and everything is going to fall back on this,” Friedlinghaus said. “The West Coast Customs Academy is going to be my final chapter.”
