Lowriders, once vilified, bounce back to claim their place in American culture

After working on cars for gangs, battling crystal meth addiction and facing three criminal convictions, legendary lowrider painter Rob Vanderslice might not have expected to be hired by the Albuquerque Police Department to paint a car for them. 

But it happened, and Vanderslice’s personal journey of rehabilitation serves as a powerful sign of the path taken by New Mexico’s lowriders in recent years.

For years, lowriders and their drivers — also called lowriders — were seen as inextricably connected to drugs and gangs. It’s taken decades, but that perception is finally changing and the candy-colored cars are now steadily rolling into admiration and respectability. 

The transformation has been particularly pronounced in the lowrider hotbed of northern New Mexico.

What are lowriders?

Lowriders are customized cars with the chassis lowered so that they narrowly clear the ground.

The cars are also known for crazy gymnastics made possible by hydraulic pumps tied to their suspensions. Eppie Martinez has installed hydraulics in more than 500 lowriders, including his own 1952 Chevy Bel Air. 

“It’s aircraft technology,” Martinez said, pointing to the pumps originally designed to control aircraft flaps and landing gear, now controlled by switches at the driver’s seat to make cars tilt and bounce. 

Over the years, Martinez has installed hydraulics that transform cars into what lowriders call hoppers, bouncing sky-high. In Espanola, New Mexico, which calls itself the lowrider capital of the world, there are competitions among hoppers to see which car can jump the highest. 

Most lowrider cars are Cadillacs, Pontiacs and Chevys from the glory days of Detroit. They’re customized with elaborate interiors, intricate engravings and kaleidoscopic paint jobs. The cars are all labors of love — either do-it-yourself projects or professionally restored vehicles that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. 

But they all have one thing in common, whether they hop to the sky or sit low to the ground: lowriders are meant to draw attention.

“Lowriders are all about that, right? They’re the car amongst cars. They’re going to be the one that pops,” said Espanola native Patricia Trujillo. 

How lowriders became a part of American culture and gang culture

The roots of lowrider culture in New Mexico stretch back to just after World War II, according to Trujillo, a college professor and deputy cabinet secretary of New Mexico’s Department of Higher Education. She says many Mexican-Americans joined the Army, then came back home after the war and felt they were being treated as second-class citizens. 

“[They] basically created this counterculture to be able to speak back and say, ‘We belong here, too,’” Trujillo said. “It’s almost like a saunter or a swagger in vehicle form.”

Early lowriders embraced America’s car culture, but made it their own. 

In the late 1980s, gangster rap artists took perceptions of lowriders in a different direction. The cars made regular appearances in music videos, which contributed to a public impression tied to gangs and drugs. Many cities passed anti-cruising ordinances in the ’80s and ’90s. 

Vanderslice, a rare “gringo” in New Mexico’s lowrider scene, started painting lowriders in the 1980s. 

“Back then I did a car for just about every gang you could think, you know what I mean?,” he said.

He made the decision to turn his life around after this third conviction – he’s 13 years clean from an addiction to crystal meth – and he’s now painting lowriders for very different clients, including the Albuquerque Police Department. 

Lowrider image improves 

Lowriding was banned in Santa Fe for many years. But in 2016, the city’s mayor not only dropped the ban on cruising but also declared a Lowrider Day, during which lowriders slow-rolled through Santa Fe’s historic plaza  by the hundreds. 

“There was this real shift in culture in that moment of recognizing lowriders as an important part of our heritage, an important part of the artistry of our communities,” Patricia Trujillo said. “And I really feel like that marked a new moment in New Mexico.”

Joan and Arthur Medina personify the morphing of lowriders’ image in the Espanola Valley. Joan was in junior high school when she met Arthur more than 40 years ago.

Of course, she was drawn in by Arthur’s lowrider. “You could see it for miles,” she said.

That car is still in a makeshift museum full of lowriders outsider their home.

“Wherever we take our cars, people are drawn to his artwork, people are drawn to what we’ve done to the cars and who we are, and people know us from all over,” Joan said.

But if drawing attention was once the only goal, the Medinas are now using that attention to help kids and serve their community.

They volunteer in their community, and help organize other local lowriders for public service projects like clothing drives for the homeless and providing meals to area kids. 

Trujillo views the change as part of a redefinition of the rebellion at the heart of lowrider culture. 

“Rebellion now is healing,” she said. “To be that beacon of hope.”

Hope for the future 

Espanola needs hope. With rates of poverty, crime and drug addiction well above state and national averages, despair is part of the landscape. 

Many kids in the area are from broken homes, according to Ben Sandoval, director of Espanola’s YMCA Teen Center. 

“There’s drugs. There’s bad influences,” Sandoval said. “What we try to do through the Teen Center is to provide them a safe place.”

In 2023, Sandoval got a grant from the Drug Enforcement Administration for a project to build lowrider bicycles as a way to help at-risk kids. 

“First of all, it gives them an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, I’ve got to get to the teen center after school every Wednesday,’” Sandoval said. “They have to feel that they’re valued in their role as the engineer, as the designer, as the planner.”

The finished bikes were so creative and impressive that the prestigious Museum of Spanish Colonial Art in Santa Fe mounted a special exhibition to put them on display.

“I’d sit back with three or four youth, and I say, ‘Look at that. They’re taking pictures of your bike,” Sandoval said. “That’s what you did.”