Theme Tuesdays: Los Boulevardos

Recently I stumbled upon on Stance Works thread that kind of rattled the entire belief system this site is based on, for years I have often considered American cars -ie: Impalas slammed on Supremes with white walls- a different style of lowrider but it turns out that is not the case.

According to members of the Los Boulevardos Car Club these cars that are too late to be traditional (in the hot rod sense), and too lowrider to be custom (think sleds), and too custom to be lowriders (think lack of wires) are their own niche entirely.

Though they are obviously influenced by all three of the aforementioned customization styles they are their own niche birthed by custom car builders and painters like Larry Watson and Gene Winfield (who I was lucky enough to meet at SEMA).

Here’s an explanation by Al Grain (Alex) on Stance Works

There was a period of time after the custom cars of the 50’s, but before the lowriders of the late 70’s where mainstream focus shifted away from custom cars (chopped tops/smoothed body panels/hubcaps/etc).

It was still the sixties though, and people did whatever their imaginations came up with with what resources they had. Metal flake paint, lace patterns, wild psychedelic paintwork took the place of more expensive body modifications.

One of the biggest differences between our cars and a modern day lowrider is the wheels. You’ll never see Daytons, McLeans or Chinese wire wheels on a Los Boulevardos car.

We’ll roll Astro Supreme, Cragars SS or Starwires, Rockets, Tru-Spokes, chrome reverse and a myriad of other period wheels.

Then there’s what I run – the ’53-’55 Buick Skylark wire wheel. These were the gold standard for a wire wheel on a custom car back in the 60’s.

I found all of this pretty interesting and when I find things interesting I tend to spend a lot of time reading about them which is how I stumbled upon the  Los Boulverdos forum and most of these photos.