Cruising the Boulevard
Will The Unsung Lowrider Segment Finally Get Some Well-Deserved Love?
By Chris Shelton
Last year the state of California did something so uncommon that you could almost call it unprecedented: It threw the automotive community a bone. Assembly Bill (AB) 436 overturned the patchwork of laws that literally made cruising a crime in many cities up and down the Golden State.
That victory is heartwarming news if you grew up cruising. A balmy Saturday night on the boulevard was where you met new friends, swapped stories with old ones, grabbed a bite to eat, possibly met your future mate, and definitely checked out what everybody else was doing to their rides. Cruising is so integral to American culture that the guy who did Star Wars made a full-length motion picture about it.
But in a legal campaign that began in the ’70s and peaked in the ’90s, cities began outlawing the activity. Critics blamed cruising for a rainbow of larger, systemic problems. The common complaint was that cruising attracted a certain element, and the crimes that seemed to follow threatened to rend the very fabric of society.
But instead of addressing the root causes of the problems—the same problems that legitimately beset these entire communities—lawmakers went after the most visible element: the cars and the people who owned them.
If you could read between lines, it was obvious who the laws targeted. Cruising went on unabated around the Fuddruckers in Mission Viejo. But it was a different story off Bristol Ave. in Santa Ana. One side was older, usually white collar, and drove street rods and musclecars. The other was younger, generally blue-collar, and drove mostly lowriders and minitrucks.
That was a shot straight to the heart: Cruising is to lowriders what drag racing is to Funny Cars. And a ban on cruising is sort of like shutting down a racetrack. While it didn’t kill lowriders, it certainly marginalized them. Less opportunity to cruise meant less exposure. And less exposure made new blood rarer. The lowrider remained a big part within certain communities. But if they were known at all outside of those communities, they were probably misunderstood.
So, a group of enthusiasts banded together to form the United Lowrider Coalition. The coalition mounted a grassroots campaign and appealed to California Assembly Member David Alvarez (D-San Diego), who introduced AB 436 to legalize automobile cruising statewide. Coalition members engaged their local representatives and coordinated so persuasively that the bill found little resistance throughout the legislative process. Governor Gavin Newsom signed the proposal into law following passage in the state legislature, and it took effect on January 1, 2024.
“This movement began the previous year with advocates securing a resolution from a state lawmaker to celebrate the history and culture of cruising, which was ultimately approved by the legislature,” says Colby Martin, Director of State Government Affairs. “While a resolution has no binding authority, its symbolic quality coupled with a well-executed awareness effort began generating a favorable buzz among the state’s politicos. Public reinforcement was aided by our contacts in the state sending letters of support. A solid example of how a positive and unified message from citizens can build bridges with elected officials to improve policy.”
One state’s acceptance of cruising doesn’t seem like it should have an effect over the rest of the country. Yet it does carry the potential to have a major impact.
Remember, this is California. It’s a big, highly populated state that happens to bear the distinction of being the ancestral home of the lowrider. It’s also ground center for most media and car culture.
Automotive Eye Candy
Video is king and few automotive expressions lend themselves to video quite the way the Lowrider does. That’s true for many vehicles, but Lowriders select elements specifically for how they react to their environment. In the presence of streetlights, for example, those elaborate paint jobs explode as a kaleidoscope of pearls, candies and flakes. Flipper caps, spoked wheels and knock-offs glitter as they rotate. Even while traveling at the speed of smell, lowriders look incredible.
Social media featuring this kind of content already exists, but with the reversal of these bans you’re going to see a lot more of it. That increased exposure is all but guaranteed to create more demand for the cars and the parts and services required to build and maintain them. And there’s great opportunity there.
For most of its existence, the lowrider-specific market has existed in a kind of undefined space. Because it was largely ignored by the rest of the industry for so long, it’s very cottage-oriented. That’s changing as more mainstream manufacturers blessedly fill that void. Still, by and large there are significant barriers for new enthusiasts to enter that market.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. According to former Lowrider Editor Joe Ray, there’s massive opportunity within that market segment. “We need help,” he admits.
The gravity of those three words from Ray can’t be understated. Ray is the definitive lowrider, an icon in the lowrider industry. He’s also a bit of an iconoclast: His ’79 Lincoln Mark V won Lowrider’s Lowrider of the Year in 1995, helping legitimize expressions made with cars that weren’t the Chevrolet Impala. He worked in the suspension-manufacturing space before Lowrider drafted him as editor in 2007. In the wake of the title’s demise, he developed The Original Lowrider Super Show, a seven-state, eight-venue touring extravaganza patterned after Lowrider’s Super Shows.
“The lowrider has to evolve to keep up with the times,” he begins. As he explains, lowriders constantly have striven to find better ways to do things. “Like people started doing the math on hydraulics and figured out what size of parts they needed to make the systems more reliable.” Builders started doing things like boxing and extending control arms to handle the stresses and geometry that a Lowrider endures. You know how we box hot-rod frames to make them stronger? They wrap theirs. If you’ve never looked at a well-built lowrider up close, you’re in for a surprise. Some are remarkably sophisticated.
The problems aren’t with the cars as much as the times. “I drive a Nissan Cube,” he says. “It’s a lot more comfortable and it handles better and it has more power than a ’79 Lincoln Mark V. And people today expect that [new-car] performance, something closer to a newer SUV or pickup.”
Even though the lowrider’s stock in trade is slow-speed performance, “People want something more powerful, more dependable,” Ray says. “Something that can get you at least 20-something miles per gallon and starts every time.”
Slow But Sure Evolution
But in the absence of any significant investment from the rest of the aftermarket industry for more than half a century, lowrider drivetrains never evolved the way they did in, say, street rods.
Most lowriders built on older platforms don’t run overdrive transmissions, despite tires that measure only 24-in. tall (stock for most cars used for lowriders ranges around 28-in. or 29-in. tall). Engines from the ’60s didn’t make much power. The ones from the ’70s made even less and had nightmare patchwork emissions systems. Complexity got even worse in the ’80s, which is a prime market for current builders. Yeah, you can make the 231 in an ’84 Cutlass pass emissions, but for how much longer? The pool for obsolete sensors and diaphragms and vacuum valves will evaporate at one point, and then what? And good luck trying to make an engine look good under all that trashy-looking emissions equipment.
“Sure, some guys will never change from that stock stuff,” Ray admits. But more people are going over to the dark side. “Guys are finally throwing the LSes in those old Impalas,” he says. That’s why the SEMA Show is such a good fit; that Show is like a big parts store for us.”
But the builders and shops are not going just to the wheel, tire and paint vendors that you’d expect. “So you got more power, now you gotta do disc brakes,” he says. Then you gotta have all that stuff to make a new engine work in an old car.
They’re going over to Hot Rod Alley to find ways to make their cars faster, safer and more dependable. Once upon a time, a lowrider might rarely leave its neighborhood. But nowadays lowriders cross county and even state lines to attend functions.
Ray saw it coming years ago. “When I was at Lowrider, we would go to [the SEMA Show] for the whole week to generate business,” he explains. He describes a scenario where the staff gathered to explore ways to appeal to exhibitors at the event. “We’d built a ’68 Impala, and my boss Rudy Rivas decided to put an LS3 in it,” he says. “It had a Currie Enterprises rearend. It had disc brakes from Willwood. It had everything you can think of: Be Cool radiator, Dakota Digital gauges.
“So, we made a diagram with a ’68 Impala: Everything had an arrow pointing to it in the diagram. We need this radiator. This transmission. These brakes.
“And that was the pitch: once you get past the wheels and the paint, there’s no difference between a lowrider and any other American car.” You can’t even draw the distinction at airbags anymore. “We use those, too.
“Well pretty soon we had Edelbrock, Wilwood and Dakota Digital, and it just continued,” he says. Optima batteries. Coker tires. “The next thing you know, we have Art Morrison advertising with us!” Yes, you heard right: Lowriders buy Art Morrison equipment. “There are a lot of Lowriders out there on Art Morrison’s frames,” he underscores. “They build those for handling, so to make them lay out you have to modify them. But hey, that frame is good.
“Then there were companies like Continental Tire. They were a big advertiser,” he continues. “No, their tires don’t fit our cars. But you know what? For every lowrider, there’s a trailer and a truck ahead of it. People who bought Lowrider weren’t putting Continentals on their lowriders; they were putting them on their daily drivers.” Simply acknowledging that market segment earned the respect and business of its constituents. “Continental Tire just blew up in the lowrider world. It was big.”
The History of Lowriding
The origins of the lowrider are a lot more familiar than you probably think. To illustrate just how familiar they are, we turned to automotive historian Ross Ruiz.
More than just learning names and dates, Ruiz pores over old magazines and scours newspaper databases to find definitive information that completes the stories about our culture. And he presents his beautifully researched findings at his Instagram feed, @46to64.
“I’m actually a custom-car guy, at least that’s how I started out,” he admits. “But as I got into the late ’50s and early ’60s, I noticed that the cars started looking a lot like lowriders.” He rattles off a list: slammed stance, lots of chrome, elaborate paint jobs with pearls and candies, narrow whitewall tires, wire wheels…and hydraulics. I was like, ‘Hey, these are lowriders.’” Most of the things that define a lowrider came out of the late-’50s custom-car scene. “I mean if you look at it, the lowrider is just what became of the custom car.”
That last one is a phrase I’d heard before—probably verbatim—from my fellow editor, the late, great Jerry Weesner. “Yeah, man, the skinny whitewalls, wire wheels, slammed stance, candy paint jobs, tufted interiors, lots of chrome,” I can hear him say a quarter century ago. “Lowriders are just early-’60s show cars with tiny tires.”
Ruiz says all the pieces are there by about 1958. By then, candy and pearl paint jobs were becoming more accessible. The Buick Skylark wire wheel was becoming more affordable. That year, US Royal introduced the Royal Master, the first tire with a whitewall that didn’t go all the way to the bead. Painters like Dean Jeffries and Larry Watson were pioneering graphics beyond flames and straight scallops. Chrome to the point of excess was king. And stances were getting ridiculously low. Forget lower than a pack of cigarettes on its side—you’d have to put one on its back to fit under Watson’s Grapevine.
“That was also the year of California’s first ride-height law,” Ruiz says. Basically California Vehicle Code 24008 states that no part of a vehicle can hang lower than the lowest part of the vehicle’s rim. The so-called scrubline law was touted as a safety measure (a blown tire could let the vehicle chassis hit the ground, causing the driver to lose control). But as applied, it was basically a cudgel that authorities could use against the nuisance of their day: teenagers. Bear in mind this is the golden age of cruising. And all a cop had to do was park around the corner from Harvey’s and bust every kid who drove past.
But within a matter of months, enthusiasts solved the problem. Two Angelinos, working entirely independently of each other, cobbled up surplus aircraft parts in such a way that they could raise their cars to the legal level in the presence of “The Man.” By the end of 1958 there is documented proof in publications independent of the automotive industry that these systems exist.
At the time, neither fully really fit the definition of what we now call a lowrider. “To me, the first car that you could really call a lowrider was the Buddha Buggy,” Ruiz says.
Tats Gotanda took what was basically a new ’59 Impala to Long Beach custom-car legend Bill Hines for the business. Having seen X-Sonic’s hydraulics in action, Hines adapted a system to lift the Buddha Buggy. “By the way, that’s where the term lifts come from,” Ruiz says. “All those early guys talk about using hydraulics to lift the car when they needed.
“That’s the car with all the pieces: It’s an Impala. It has candy paint. It has wire wheels. It has skinny whitewalls.” It also has the most outlandish button-tufted swivel buckets and sculpted rear seat and shag carpet. “That’s a lowrider,” Ruiz insists.
The Trend Gains Steam
The other pieces of the lowrider puzzle followed almost immediately: Astro introduced the Custom and Supreme wheels in 1963; the Cragar Super Sport—probably the most popular lowrider wheel for its time—came out the following year. So far nobody has definitively pinned down the first use of the 5.20-14 tire, but Joe Ray recalled a discussion about that very thing with the Ruelas brothers, founders of the Duke’s car club.
“You know, they were from 38th Street down there in South Central. Julio tells me, ‘The brothers back there—the black guys—they were the first to have the 5.20 tire with the white stripe. They were running them before we were.” The small tire was the perfect remedy for fender interference when running heavily reversed wheels. The small diameter meant the car could ride even lower without violating that scrubline rule.
“In my opinion, [lowriders] really didn’t start going crazy till the later ’60s and ’70s,” Stoll recalls. “That’s when the paint jobs started getting really wild.”
Remember the Funny Car reference from earlier in the story? “Wild” Bill Carter was about the most sought-after Funny Car painter of his time. “Bill got his start working for Larry (Watson),” Stoll says. “When Larry went off to Hollywood, Bill took over. He started hiring a lot of Hispanic kids from the valley. They would get good enough to go into business on their own. They were taking the techniques that Bill Carter was using [many pioneered by Watson] and applying them to lowriders.” Whether directly or indirectly, that’s the school system that gave us legends like Walt Prey, Gary Baca and Steve Stanford.
Exactly when the lowrider got labeled as a Hispanic expression isn’t quite as clear, though. By the late ’60s, the custom car as a mainstream expression was kind of over. “Most custom-car guys were starting to get into the custom-van scene by then,” Ruiz says. But in those East LA and South Central neighborhoods where most of those custom-car shops began, the lowrider kept cruising.
Coincidentally, a movement around Hispanic identity started to coalesce. Americans with Mexican ancestry—Chicanos as they began calling themselves then—embraced the lowrider as a symbol of their cultural identity. Lowrider clubs also sponsored charitable events that helped fund the United Farm Workers movement, among other things.
Then, in 1974, NBC introduced the lowrider to the rest of America by using Jesse Valadez’ Gypsy Rose in the opening credits of the series “Chico and the Man.” The following year, WAR released “Lowrider,” a song with a definitively Afro-Latin hook to it. In 1977, three San Jose State students began publishing a magazine based on the expression. Lowrider the magazine gave voice to the Chicano identity and its expressions. The movement either grew alongside of, or spread to, places like Espanola, New Mexico, a town considered by many as the lowrider capitol of the world.
In the ’80s and ’90s, the West-Coast hip-hop scene rallied around the lowrider. By 1990, Lowrider began collaborating with Thump Records to distribute the types of music that dominated the scene.
Slowly Winning Acceptance
Lowrider culture evolved over the decades but found relatively little acceptance among the auto community until about the late ’00s. Not so coincidentally, that was about the time that Joe Ray took the mantle at Lowrider and began courting vendors from across the industry.
“The first time [the Grand National Roadster Show] started to let in lowriders, they didn’t let any of ours [Imperials car club] come,” he says. But rather than fight, they assimilated, at least to a degree. “We had to get that hot-rod-style interior, you know, copying those ideas.
“And we didn’t take everything that was crazy. We took cars that looked more like musclecars. And the paint wasn’t that wild. But we got in there like we’re, you know, sneaking in,” he says, laughing. “At first, [builders] walked around and looked at our cars. You could see some wouldn’t even give ‘em the time of day.
“Next year we did the same thing. But the third year, you’d see the same people and they would say hello to us. By the fourth or fifth year, we started talking after a couple beers and you know, and we would hang out for the whole weekend. We all became friends. Then we started taking in all the wild paint jobs and the velvet interiors,” he chuckles.
“We would hold 10, 12 spots there every year for 13 years,” he recalls. ”And for 13 years we got to know everybody there. And it was beautiful. And I was breaking barriers. And that’s what’s important.”
The lowrider’s presence in these unlikely spaces had a significant effect on the rest of our industry. In what amounts to a full circle, it played a significant role in revitalizing the early-’60s custom car. Enthusiasts who probably wouldn’t have built a lowrider suddenly found themselves building cars that could pass for either style depending on how you look at it.
“I always try to correct people when they say that the lowrider belongs to a certain group,” Ruiz says. While the lowrider became a legitimate expression for certain groups, it should be obvious that it was a collaborative effort. An effort that spans more than six decades. An effort that began, really, with all of us.