In Southern California in the 1950s and early '60s, young Chicanos created a car style called "lowrider" that expressed the pride and playfulness of Mexican American culture.
The peak of lowrider culture came in the 1970s on Whittier Boulevard in Los Angeles, a wide commercial street that cut through the barrio of the city. Gliding along Whittier on Saturday nights in the '70s were brightly-painted cars modified by young Mexican American men to ride low to the ground, fitted with special hydraulics to make them bounce up and down. These drivers had little interest in the rubber-burning speed of their hot-rodding peers. The guiding principle here was bajito y suavecito: low and slow.
The Whittier "cruise" was a social event of large importance, an exciting arena where la raza (the people) could come together to have fun, where young men and women could check each other out, and where a proud political and historical consciousness could be articulated.
Lowriders, wrote journalist Ted West in 1976, "express the refusal of a young Chicano American to be Anglicized. There has never been a clearer case of the automobile being used as an ethnic statement." Lowriding continues today - under the radar compared to the '70s, but thriving.
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