O.C.’s ‘Mobile Mama’ offers car advice for families on the go
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Once an elementary school teacher, Christina Branman still educates, even if the topic has changed into questions like how to choose the right mid-sized SUV for your family of four, soon to be five.
“Mobile Mama” has an answer. She also has 1.1 million followers on TikTok, and nearly 400,000 on Instagram who enjoy her videos and advice on the right cars for moms everywhere. She also makes short YouTube videos on the subject.
Branman came up with a slogan to begin her videos early on — “Hey mamas!” — and things took off quickly after she posted her first video reviewing a 2021 Land Rover Discovery.
Within a year of starting on the social media platform in 2021, she said she made more money as a content creator than her annual salary as a teacher.
“I do love teaching,” said Branman, 35, who lives in North Orange County. “I love helping people. I don’t have students in front of me where I’m seeing their growth each day, but it helps when on social media people reach out and say, ‘Hey, I chose this car because of your video.’ Or, ‘This helped me narrow it down, thank you.’ That tells me that I am helping others. I’m educating them on which car would best suit their family, so it does have purpose and meaning.”
Branman, who grew up in Brea, started teaching after graduating from UC Santa Barbara and earning her credential. She first taught in the Santa Barbara area, then in the Fullerton School District after moving back to Orange County.
In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, she was pregnant with her first daughter and teaching kindergarten to home-school students over Zoom. Her husband, Miles, is also a car reviewer, and she would help him produce videos for his YouTube channel, @milesperhr, which has more than 700,000 subscribers in its own right.
“I was thinking, my husband reviews cars, but why aren’t there more women in the auto industry reviewing cars?” she said. “Why aren’t there moms talking about which car would work? He would drive Lamborghinis, he would have Porsches, all of these cars that were not really family friendly. I thought we needed more women, we needed more moms in the auto industry.”
After filming a few videos with her husband, her “Mobile Mama” TikTok account blew up quickly, and Branman has refined it over the years. Recently she began experimenting with videos like old school versus new school cars. She also often engages with the moms in the comments, enjoying the interaction with the community that she’s built.
Sometimes she features her two daughters, now 4 and 2 years old, in the videos, though their faces aren’t shown. She and her husband don’t show them the “Mobile Mama” videos, but they still join in saying “Hey mamas” around the house.
“They’ve been in way too many fancy cars,” Brannan said with a laugh. “My husband has a Lamborghini Urus right now. They’re like, ‘Oh, I love this blue color.’ I’m like, ‘Yep, it’s nice for a week. We get this for a week.’ But yeah, they think it’s fun … Maybe when they’re older and they know what social media is, they’ll have an opinion.”
Like her husband, Branman will typically be loaned a car per week from an automaker, via a press fleet. She also gets invited to press events such as the one Ford held earlier this week in the San Diego area.
Most recently, she’s been checking out a red 2025 Chevrolet Traverse SUV to review. Clearing up a common misconception, she said the automotive companies don’t pay her, though it’s certainly a win-win as their cars get publicity and she gets content that TikTok does pay her for.
And of course, her friends know where to turn when they need car advice.
“I definitely shake her down,” said Ava Ames, a good friend who has known Branman since high school, with a laugh. “I bought a Toyota RAV4 last October, and when I was figuring out what car to buy, I kind of wanted a smaller SUV. I was between this and the Honda, the Kia, the Mazda, and she really helped me narrow down exactly the car that I should get. She was super-quick about it. She knew all of the different cars in the market with the budget I wanted.
“She told me, here’s a ‘reach’ car, here’s a more affordable car, here’s a family friendly car. She’s a wealth of knowledge when it comes to anything car-related now, and all of her friends take advantage of her, yes, without paying her.”
Ames is not surprised that Branman’s “Mobile Mama” videos have taken off.
“She knows how to talk fast and deliver information, and she also knows how to land a joke,” Ames said. “She can pace well in a video. If you think about how fast she’s moving through an entire car, she’s hitting the car top to bottom in like a minute, and she’s still finding a way to make it fun. People just feel relaxed watching her. It’s almost like watching a baking show or something.”
The upward trajectory of the videos hasn’t been a straight line. After Branman had her second daughter in 2023, her motivation and content production waned temporarily, though now she’s back up to posting three or four videos per week.
It’s a family affair. Along with Max’s support, Christina’s father, Hector, has served as her videographer and still helps out. She also recently hired a female member at her church — who is in a moms group with her — to aid with video and production.
Branman said she never knew how much of an influencer she would become, but she’s enjoying the ride of continuing to pump out content and be creative.
“It is really fun to see these new vehicles and be the first to share them with everyone, go to fun places,” she said. “It’s a family thing, which is really nice. They fly us to different places to check out these new cars, and I think that’s a lot more fun than most jobs.”
