When the lights go up at today's huge lowrider shows, hundreds of cars glinting with triple-dipped chrome and gold plating, intricate candy and metal flake paint jobs, rolling on custom-spoked wire rims featuring the finest spinners money can buy, fans throughout Aztlan (Chicano slang for the American Southwest) and all America, to Japan and Europe, gasp with appreciation and envy. Other custom car historians dig a little deeper, tapping out a few lines about the late '70s, the television show Chico and the Man, and the first few issues of Low Rider Magazine evidence enough that lowriders have enjoyed at least a decade or two on the streets.

Let the white kids race hysterically; Chicano youths defined cool by affecting a flamboyant, relaxed look, first with 1930's- and 1940's-era Chevys, today known as "bombs," and later with the boat-size Chevrolet Impalas and similar cars. Rather than use their cars as symbols of rejection of their elders, the lowriders were obviously groveling of their parents' generation. They embraced the zoot suits and drooping mustaches of the so-called Pacheco, hipsters of a previous generation. Lowriders have evolved a great deal from the early postwar years; in fact, they have grown into a worldwide fad, with a magazine dedicated to the art form, a busy show circuit and clubs as far away as Japan. If you are interested in knowing the history as well as origin of low riders, these all are present with Low-Riders.org on your single click.