Lowrider, by Paige Penland (2003)

Cruise low and slow.

This is about the car, not the song; the song is about the car. A Lowrider is a form of car popular in the Mexican-American community. This 150-page illustrated book celebrates the low and slow lowriders that have cruised the streets of Los Angeles and other cities since the 1940s.

While the Anglo drivers looked for ways to soup up their cars, making them faster, the Chicanos went at the custom car from another angle. They developed the lowrider, a customized super-clean car, usually a Chevrolet - but other models were sometimes used - with skinny tires that would sink up inside the wheel wells and let the car ride as lowly slung as possible. The bottoms of some cars barely clearing the ground, therefore the car could only be operated at very slow speed or it would bottom out and incur damage. Today, the movement has left the Mexican-American neighborhoods and has migrated across the globe. There are also active lowrider communities in the Far East, as the book points out.

Many of the cars are moving works of art with thousands of hours, not to mention untold dollars, of work on their pristine bodies, paint jobs, and shining chrome.

The book is a beautifully illustrated coffee table edition from the company that produces Lowrider magazine. The early lowriders were changed mainly in appearance, with fender skirts, hubcaps, and antennae, while the craze then evolved to creating intricate lowering systems powered by electrics or hydraulics or combinations of methods.

The book traces the history of the lowrider, from the earliest crude attempts to be different to the latest hydraulic systems that raise and lower the suspension at the flick of a switch. Some systems are so sophisticated that each corner is adjustable at will and the operator can make the car jump and dance by quickly manipulating the hydraulic switches.

Pickup trucks were not often lowered but some enterprising customizers learned to reverse the leaf springs and then custom lowrider pickup trucks became more common.

Although Chevrolet remains the marque of choice, with the mid-sixties hard tops the holy grail, the culture embraces many other marques, through the comparable GM models, first, other American cars, and Japanese cars, which along with VWs are known as "Euros."

The interiors have not been neglected, with the cockpits reupholstered in the plushest materials and sound systems with gigantic speakers to make sure that bystanders get up and take notice.

The book is packed with some 200 glossy photographs of the quality seen in the enthusiast magazines. Usually a full page illustration is provided and several have spreads illustrating all the unique features. A special section covers the new trend in altering bicycles for the younger generation to have their own lowriders.

The book is an interesting read one time through, especially for custom car enthusiasts.

Recommended: Yes