Lowriders Vs Hot Rods - The Downshift Episode 8
On this episode of The Downshift
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00:00 Today we're standing at the Grand National Roadster Show, which has a long legacy, all
00:04 the way back to 1950.
00:06 Lowriders at a hot rod show, it adds a little bit of color and flavor to this event.
00:11 The interesting thing about seeing the lowriders and the custom cars come together stylistically
00:17 right now is there's really a cultural clash there.
00:20 People ask me all the time, "What is a hot rod?"
00:38 And I'll tell you in the very first issue of Hot Rod Magazine, Robert E. Peterson wrote
00:42 that it is any car that's modified by its owner for either performance or appearance.
00:47 The original hot rods were really about racing, they were dry lakes cars, top speed cars,
00:51 drag cars, but almost immediately it became a customization market.
00:56 You saw guys that were building not so much for performance, but for style.
01:00 And we see that all the way back into the late 40s.
01:03 Today we're standing at the Grand National Roadster Show.
01:05 Originally it was just that, a roadster show, but today there is everything to be found
01:10 here.
01:11 It's a melting pot of car style.
01:12 We see retro, we see cutting edge, we see lowriders, trucks, everything.
01:15 I'm constantly walking down the aisles and looking at everybody else's ideas.
01:20 The bar is continually set at every show and you see it when these guys enter their vehicles.
01:25 You can take what a guy's doing over here on his lowrider or whatever and apply it to
01:30 the car you're building and that's how the whole thing just grows and evolves and we
01:34 get new styles of hot rods and customs all the time.
01:37 There's the hot rod styles on this end and the lowrider styles on this end, if you will.
01:42 The lowriders are slowly catching up at least half way up to the hot rod style so to speak.
01:48 Not to say that the hot rods aren't watching what we do, but we both kind of copy off from
01:54 each other's styles and we're always continually changing up.
01:58 For a long time a reader of Hot Rod Magazine would look at a lowrider and be like, "Oof,
02:02 you know it's got a velour interior, it's overkill on the paint job and things like
02:05 that."
02:06 And culturally the builders didn't really get along either.
02:10 But that's not happening now.
02:11 You really see the whole thing meshing and in fact I think that the guys who are the
02:16 baddest metal plate painters, the best airbrushers, the best pinstripers are all coming out of
02:20 the lowrider world and we've got to get with those guys to make the cars that hot rodders
02:25 want or that more specifically that greaser customizers want.
02:30 Sometimes they'll put out a hot rod out there with just the right pearl and it'll blow away
02:35 all the paint jobs if it's just the right different color.
02:38 And I've seen that sometimes and it gives me an idea.
02:41 Maybe I don't have to shoot my car in a candy or a flake, maybe I can get just the right
02:46 pearl that no one has and that might make you a winner.
02:48 When I look at a lowrider, I think it is closer to being a custom car.
02:52 Lowriding began with the old lead sleds and went into the customs and out of that the
02:58 lowriders broke off.
02:59 There's a club called the Tridents that put on a show at the Los Angeles Sports Arena
03:04 that really started to blend the two styles.
03:06 You saw a lot of custom cars that started evolving lower and lower, paint jobs wilder
03:11 and wilder and ultimately wheels smaller and smaller.
03:15 You saw stuff going on in places like Whittier, Bellflower, East LA that started to separate
03:21 from what was happening in what we deem the custom car world.
03:24 You will see things now that are pinstriped and metal flaked in a style you might consider
03:30 a lowrider in the 70s or 80s but now we're calling it a rockabilly car or a greaser car
03:35 and when it comes down to it, the only difference is it's probably on 15 inch Astro Supremes
03:39 with white walls instead of being on a set of 13 inch wires.
03:43 Definitely this is a melting pot that's brewing for about 15 years already.
03:47 When I travel around the country with lowrider and I talk to people that are lowrider fans
03:52 and I let them know, you got to look at the other automotive industries, you got to see
03:55 what Hot Rod's doing out there, what their ideas are and how you can take from something
04:01 here, something there, change it up a little bit and add it to your car.
04:04 At the same time that we're seeing our retro customizers sort of absorb some style off
04:10 of older lowriders, you're seeing the lowrider guys start to evolve in some interior and
04:15 engine treatments that typically would have been in the high end Hot Rod world.
04:20 It's all about the detail, it's all about placing things in a car that are seen, not
04:25 noticed.
04:26 Instead of velour, I'm seeing leather.
04:29 Instead of just a small block Chevy, we're starting to see a few LS1s in lowriders or
04:33 if they do have a small block, we're seeing dual quads.
04:36 To build reliability, we've taken a little bit of the Hot Rod world and put it into the
04:39 lowrider market, making the cars reliable, putting fuel injection in the vehicles in
04:44 order for them to do the long haul.
04:46 Now it's all about all show, all go.
04:49 So while the Hot Rod world's moving back a little bit, the lowrider world is moving forward.
04:54 You want to travel in comfort and because there's no limits, you want something reliable
04:58 that you can fire up that sounds good.
05:00 If people are going to appreciate your paint, they're going to ask you what's in the truck.
05:04 Oh, you got a nice interior.
05:06 What do you have under the hood?
05:07 You know, in the back of the old days it was like, well, I'd really rather not open up
05:12 my hood.
05:13 Now, that hood comes up.
05:15 I don't want to make this seem like it is just one big giant love fest.
05:18 I mean, the lowrider guys and the Hot Rod guys aren't partying together too much anymore
05:23 because I got to be honest, some of the Hot Rod guys still think some of that stuff is
05:26 pretty tacky.
05:28 We're not into the big naked lady murals.
05:30 We're not into the velour interior with the bar or the roulette wheel or anything like
05:34 that.
05:35 Can't really get into a 13 inch wire.
05:39 So while we like to borrow off each other, we're not necessarily borrowing the whole
05:43 program.
05:44 At the end of the day, I'm going to fight for that wheel and tire until the day I die.
05:48 And people may be upset with it by the way it looks or think that it ruined the looks
05:53 of the car.
05:54 That's why they're different.
05:57 They're the originals.
06:00 Not that I can completely bash on the lowrider guys because Hot Rod guys do some stuff too.
06:06 You might not like a Virgin Mary but I would definitely take a Virgin Mary mural over this
06:10 one right here.
06:11 I mean, let's be honest, bad taste is forever.
06:17 So performance, it's crossover.
06:20 That was good.
06:24 [Music]
06:28 (upbeat music)