Built on the Road: How a Father and Son Turned a Love of Cars Into The Customized Ride

What began in 2022 as an idea to share customized vehicles has grown into a father-and-son automotive media brand with hundreds of thousands of followers, more than 250 million views and a story that is still being written. For The Coastal Buzz publisher Chris Benton and his son, Lil Chris, the next chapter isn’t about moving away from the cars that built the brand. It’s about bringing more of themselves—and the people behind the cars—into the story.

When Chris Benton launched The Customized Ride on October 16, 2022, there was no five-year business plan sitting on his desk.

There was no roadmap to hundreds of thousands of followers. There was no expectation that he would eventually travel across the Southeast covering some of the automotive community’s biggest events. And there certainly wasn’t a plan for the project to become something he would one day build alongside his son.

There was simply an idea and a love for customized vehicles.

Nearly four years later, that idea has become something Benton says he never could have imagined when he posted those first pieces of content.

Today, The Customized Ride has built an audience approaching 600,000 followers across its social platforms and generated more than 250 million views. Its library includes thousands of original videos captured at car shows, cruise-ins and automotive events, from polished classics and traditional hot rods to wild custom trucks, lowriders, modern builds and vehicles that sometimes seem almost impossible to describe.

But behind those numbers is another story.

It’s the story of a father and son who started traveling to car shows together and, somewhere along the road, realized they were building something together.

It Didn’t Start as a Father-and-Son Brand

One of the interesting parts of The Customized Ride story is that Lil Chris wasn’t behind the camera when the brand began.

Chris launched The Customized Ride in October 2022, and from the beginning, the road trips were family trips. Lil Chris was already there, traveling to shows alongside his dad, Sandy and Katelynn. But during the first 6-9 months, Chris was the one behind the camera, filming and posting the vehicles they encountered along the way.

The format was straightforward: find interesting vehicles, capture them in a way that allowed the car to speak for itself and share them with people who loved automotive culture.

Then, Mid-2023, something began to change. Lil Chris wasn’t simply coming to the shows anymore. He started picking up a phone and filming the cars himself. What had started as something Chris created was gradually becoming something father and son were creating together.

What began as a son accompanying his dad gradually became something more.

He began filming. He started developing his own eye for vehicles. He learned what caught his attention and what he wanted to capture. Eventually, Chris launched Hot Classic Rides to give his son a platform of his own.

Chris may have created that brand for him, but he is quick to make an important distinction.

“I launched the brand, but he built it,” Benton said.

Lil Chris began creating his own content at shows, finding his own vehicles and developing his own perspective. Today, the two brands have become part of a much larger father-and-son journey.

And for Chris, that has become more meaningful than any individual viral video.

Thousands of Miles and a Lot of Cars

The growth of The Customized Ride didn’t happen from behind a desk.

Much of it happened on highways.

Chris and Lil Chris have traveled throughout the Southeast documenting automotive culture at events including Run to the Sun in Myrtle Beach, the Daytona Turkey Run in Daytona Beach, Scrapin the Coast in Biloxi, Pigeon Forge Rod Run in Pigeon Forge, Emerald Coast Cruizin in Panama City Beach and Battle in Bama, which was previously held in Mobile before moving to Talladega.

They’ve covered the Charlotte AutoFair among so many others and spent countless hours walking show fields, parking lots, surrounding meets and nighttime cruising areas looking for the next vehicle worth sharing.

At some shows, that means coming home with hundreds—or even more than a thousand—pieces of video.

The approach has helped create an enormous archive of original automotive footage. The Customized Ride’s YouTube channel alone now contains approximately 3,900 videos, while thousands more pieces of content have been distributed across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other platforms.

Some videos have generated a few thousand views.

Others have generated millions.

By 2026, The Customized Ride had produced over 70 videos that crossed the one-million-view mark, with the overall brand surpassing 250 million views.

The growth happened quickly.

The audience grew from roughly 10,000 followers to 100,000 during 2023. By the end of 2024, it had climbed to around 400,000. That grew to approximately 550,000 in 2025, with The Customized Ride and its expanding social presence moving toward the 600,000 mark in 2026.

For something Benton didn’t know would become a business—or even a father-and-son venture—the numbers still sometimes seem difficult to comprehend.

The Cars Have Always Been the Heroes

There is one thing Benton doesn’t want to change as The Customized Ride enters its next chapter.

The cars are the heroes.

That philosophy has guided the brand from the beginning.

Chris isn’t interested in suddenly standing in front of every vehicle and making the content about himself. The Customized Ride grew because people love cars, and he believes that should remain at the center of what the brand creates.

A beautiful ’57 Chevy doesn’t need someone standing in front of it explaining why people should look at it.

A radical custom build can stop someone mid-scroll on its own.

The rumble of an engine, the reflection of show lights across fresh paint, a car rolling slowly through a crowded cruise strip or the reaction of someone hearing an enormous sound system for the first time can tell its own story.

But after nearly four years and thousands upon thousands of videos, Benton has also come to another realization.

The cars can remain the heroes while the people behind The Customized Ride become a bigger part of the experience.

That includes Chris.

And increasingly, it includes his son.

The Next Version of The Customized Ride

The shift has already started.

At a recent automotive event in Brunswick, Georgia, Chris and Lil Chris tried something different. Instead of simply capturing the cars, each selected vehicles they liked and talked about them on camera.

Lil Chris was nervous during the first couple of attempts.

Then something changed.

By the third and fourth videos, he was becoming more comfortable. Soon he was looking at a car before filming, deciding what he wanted to talk about and showing his dad where he wanted the camera positioned.

Chris recognized what was happening.

His son wasn’t simply appearing in one of Dad’s videos.

He was learning how to tell a story.

That small experiment represents a much larger direction for The Customized Ride.

The familiar car-show footage isn’t going away. In fact, Benton expects it to remain the overwhelming majority of what TCR captures at events.

But surrounding that foundation will be more storytelling.

There will be short conversations with owners standing beside their vehicles. More opportunities for Chris and Lil Chris to share the cars that catch their attention. More commentary. More thoughtfully edited pieces built from the enormous TCR archive.

And there will be longer conversations, too.

Benton has conducted more than 700 interviews through The Chris & Sandy Show since beginning his interviewing journey in 2014. Now some of those years of experience are finding a new home inside The Customized Ride.

The plan is to pursue virtual conversations with builders, collectors, automotive personalities and celebrities who have genuine connections to cars and automotive culture.

The car will still be the doorway.

The conversation can go much further.

Telling the Road Behind the Brand

Perhaps the most personal addition is a new original series scheduled to begin on October 16, 2026—the fourth anniversary of The Customized Ride.

It’s called The Road We’ve Never Told.

For years, followers have seen the finished product: the cars, the shows, the road trips, the viral videos and the growing numbers.

They haven’t necessarily seen what happened behind them.

The new series will tell those stories.

The money spent traveling to shows before anyone knew whether the investment would pay off. The videos that unexpectedly took off. The ones that didn’t. The doubts. The mistakes. The moments when walking away crossed Chris’s mind. The first meaningful business opportunities. The decision to keep going during a year when rising travel costs dramatically reduced how many events the family could attend.

And perhaps most importantly, it will tell the story of how something Chris started by himself gradually became something he was building with his son.

The series won’t pretend the ending is already known.

Because it isn’t.

That’s part of the point.

A Family Behind the Cameras

Although The Customized Ride has become strongly associated with Chris and Lil Chris, there is a family behind what people see.

Sandy and their daughter Katelynn have been part of countless trips and weekends. Sometimes that has meant being at the show. Other times it has meant supporting what Chris and Lil Chris were doing while they spent hours walking a show field with phones in their hands.

And Katelynn is developing her own opinions about cars, too.

At seven years old, she doesn’t need to know engine specifications or automotive history to decide which car she likes best.

Sometimes color is enough.

That’s part of the authenticity Chris wants to preserve as the family becomes more visible within The Customized Ride.

Nobody needs to play a character.

Lil Chris doesn’t need to become a miniature version of his dad. Katelynn doesn’t need to become an automotive expert. Sandy doesn’t need to suddenly become the face of the brand.

They can simply be themselves.

From Social Media Page to Automotive Media Brand

Benton’s vision for The Customized Ride has grown considerably since 2022.

He no longer sees its future simply as an automotive social media page that posts a lot of car videos.

He sees the possibility of an independent automotive media company.

That means continuing the high-volume event coverage that built the audience while developing longer-form show films, owner stories, automotive interviews, original series, commentary and other formats that give people more reasons to return.

It also means continuing to develop Lil Chris as a creator in his own right.

For Chris, who also serves as publisher of The Coastal Buzz, there is something particularly meaningful about building a media property that his son may one day help carry far beyond where it is today.

Lil Chris is 14.

By the time Chris is 60, his son will be entering adulthood with years of experience behind a camera, interviewing people, covering automotive events, creating social content and understanding how a media brand operates.

There is no way to know today what that will become.

Chris has learned that lesson already.

After all, he didn’t know where any of this was going when he started The Customized Ride in October 2022.

He couldn’t have predicted hundreds of thousands of followers.

He couldn’t have predicted more than 250 million views.

He couldn’t have predicted the miles to Myrtle Beach, Daytona, Biloxi, Talladega, Panama City Beach and beyond.

And he certainly couldn’t have predicted that one of the most important things he would find along the way wasn’t another car to film.

It was a creative partnership with his son.

The next chapter of The Customized Ride will look different from the first.

There will be more voices. More stories. More personality. More conversations with the people who build, own and love the vehicles that bring the automotive community together.

But the foundation isn’t changing.

The cars were the heroes when The Customized Ride began. They are the heroes today. And wherever this father-and-son media team goes next, the cars will remain the reason they hit the road in the first place.