Growing up in Mexico, Marco Flores fantasized about the lowrider cars he saw in magazines, studying their colorful bodies and gleaming engine bays. He also loved his father’s Chevrolet Chevelle. In a tribute, Mr. Flores eventually restored an electric blue Chevelle — the same muscle car his father owned — with the help of his children.
Now his custom creations, which he designs and builds after work in his garage in Port Chester, New York, are featured in the same lowrider magazines.
His blue Chevelle ”represents my entire childhood and my passion for cars,” said Mr. Flores, 55, who works six days a week at a Mamaroneck body shop. “When I turn the ignition, I get the thrill of feeling that my father knows I did it for him.”
The family is a pillar of lowrider culture, which flourished in crazy postwar Los Angeles among Mexican Americans who took used cars they could afford and turned them into crazy, rolling works of art. Just as Mr. Flores shared his skills with his children, many fans are embracing the scene as a family-friendly way to honor traditions and celebrate accomplishments, adding trunk plumbing, bright body paint and iconography like the Virgin Mary. of Guadalupe on the hood.
California recently lifted bans on low-cruising vehicles and vehicle modifications that had been in place for decades. These issues have not caused the same concern in New York City, so as the city’s Mexican population has grown, so has the visibility of low-powered drivers on the streets and at car dealerships. Once dismissed as gang-related, lowriders now also win awards and support local charities.
Alfonso Gonzales Toribio, a Chicano professor in the ethnic studies department at the University of California, Riverside, who owns a lowrider, traced the trend to a mid-century boom in unionized industrial jobs. It spread to hobbyists recalling custom cars back in Mexico.
“It was done with a Mexican twist, giving the cars a cultural expression, lowering them and using strong colors,” he said, adding, “We’re changing everything we do.”
In a dirt parking lot in Astoria, Queens, several dozen lowriders — from full-sized machines to radio-controlled scale models — were on display last August, overlooking the East River and Manhattan. Children walked with parents, admiring the details, much of the work done by the owners themselves to save money. Young men on silver and gold-plated lowrider bikes lounge in chinos and T-shirts, while other men swap stories about cars of yesteryear. At one point, the crowd watched a Mexican folkloric dance troupe in animal costumes.
No one knew much about lowriders in the New York area when Mr. Flores left the hardships of Mexico to join his mother and sister in Port Chester in 1998. He scoffed at the cheap paint jobs he saw, knowing he could does better, and convinced someone to let him paint a truck in bright colors. Word soon spread about his custom paint jobs and sparkling plumbing, and it hasn’t stopped since. Now his cars compete—and win—at local auto shows that once looked down on low riders.
The skills he uses to build lowriders have also made him noticeable in his day job: Mr. Flores has gotten so good at making parts that he now makes his own body panels for luxury import cars.
“We earned respect little by little,” he said.
Bikes and fashion, part of the lowrider scene as well, attracted Fidencio Cortez, a musician living in Coney Island. He commissioned Mr. Flores to paint his lowrider bike, a squat, metal-plated BMX-style machine that he rides with friends.
“You really didn’t see these bikes at first,” said Mr. Cortez, 33, referring to New York. “But we’ve seen them in parade videos and on YouTube.”
Thanks to online popularity, the culture has gone global, Mr Gonzalez Toribio said, pointing to low-drive clubs as far away as Japan. Instead of doing the work themselves, like Mr. Flores, fans can order online all the parts one would need to build a car — if money isn’t an issue. However, traditionalists have mixed feelings.
“The problem with commoditizing culture is that we lose control over it,” said Mr. González Toribio, adding, “Will the market take over low-riding?”
That’s why Mr. Flores raised his three children to care about cars, holding flashlights and passing keys to their father. It reminded him of the days he helped his father, a bus driver, clean his Chevelle before going for rides.
His passion is gone. One son, Marco Jr., customizes Japanese compact cars, and his work has been featured at the New York International Auto Show alongside million-dollar vehicles. Mr. Flores’ daughter, Sherry, will inherit his other car, an apple-red Chevy Impala with gold trim and sparkling hydraulic pumps in the trunk that make the car dance and bounce.
“She calls him her baby,” Mr. Flores said. “But when I die, I want my ashes to go into the hydraulic tanks. That way, when she drives it, I’ll still be with her.”
