New Cars Rombengan 2011 - 2020

"Lee's '41 Buick Special is neither a "by the book" lowrider nor a 50's custom. It is a combination of the best features of both words."

Walt's impact on customs and lowriders has been felt for over 30 years. His style was all his own. The lines he laid, the scrolls he put down, his flames, his famous roses, the crazy full paintjobs he churned out...they are and will forever be legendary.

When I was a kid I heard Walt's name often. He striped many cars for my family in the late 60's. We lived only a few miles from his shop and my uncle had known him for years. In 1970, my uncle took his 65 Impala to Walt to get the quarter windows striped. Walt did it in just a few minutes. "Blues Image" adorned the window and my uncle Bob thanked Walt as he left his shop to hit the boulevard.


A couple years and alot of work later, my uncle's 65 was almost show-ready. My Grandpa finished the paint and it was time for the finishing touch....some striping by Walt. He was still local and was really making a name for himself. Walt was the go-to guy and always had a busy schedule. But my uncle wouldn't go to anyone else. With a new paint scheme the car needed a new name. "Plum Crazy". Walt did it in two colors in his signature lettering style. He outlined a bunch of panels with thick lines. And he did some pretty large scrolls on the side of the car. Again, my uncle was very satisfied and proud of the work Walt did on the car. It was the signature late 60's/early 70's Walt Prey style that he was known for.
1972.


Around the same time(late 60's) Walt did similar work on a 67 Impala that we've come to know and love. It was owned by a man I'm proud to call my friend, Howard Gribble. If you're familiar with this blog and with the Los Boulevardos messageboard, you've most likely seen this Impala before. Walt worked his magic on Howard's car and Howard had the great foresight to document it with quality photography.




Here's a young Walt Prey posing in front of Howard's 67 Impala.


Cars like Howard's 67 and my uncle Bob's 65 were the boulevard customs from an era that gave birth to the full-on lowriders that we know today. They were the missing link between 50's customs and 70's lowriders. Before lowriders were called lowriders. Walt's style was all over them. He was doing straight lines, scrollwork, dagger style designs, lettering, you name it. He played a huge part in the evolution of this style.

The natural progression was toward more crazy styles and techniques. Again, Walt Prey was at the forefront and his work was well on it's way to legendary status. Two words..."Gypsy Rose". This car(both versions) will forever be one of, if not the, most famous lowriders in history. And it was because of Walt Prey.

Hand painted roses, outlines, veiling, cobwebbing, fades....Walt did it all.






He was definitely a master of style.






It's safe to say that modern day lowrider style and custom paint in general would not be what it is today without the vision, talent, and work ethic of Walt Prey. Los Boulevardos Car Club thanks him from the bottom of our hearts. And our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.

The Allen Duke 64 via Howard Gribble. November, 1969.

Lowriders might be showing their cars like this now. But Kustoms did it first.

I was going through some boxes in the garage and came across a bunch of pictures I took at car shows throughout the years, some of these seem like ages ago. Time flies when you're having fun!

Here's a merc I used to love, haven't seen it in years but i did spy a picture of it now fully painted and completed some where on the east coast.

I know Miguel from the Strays C.C. helped build this one back when he was a lobo...

Ron Aguirre passed away on Thursday May 26, 2011. I didn't know him personally. Many of my friends did. I wish I could say more about who he was as a person, but I respectfully leave that to those who knew him well. To Ron's family and close friends he was much more than the owner/builder of one of the coolest custom cars in history. But for the sake of homage and in keeping with what we do on this site, I'd like to thank him for the impact he left on the custom car and lowrider world. His legacy is one that began in the 50's and will not soon be forgotten. There's always fodder for debate in the car world. Was Ron's X-Sonic the first on hydraulics? Was it the second? Who else was doing it at that time? Who did it even before him? It goes on and on. And honestly, it doesn't really matter much. Pat Ganahl said it beautifully in Rodder's Journal #50. "First car with Hydraulics? First bubbletop? How about the best custom Corvette ever."

Pat, we agree.

Thank you Ron Aguirre. Your legacy lives on.

I've been wanting to do a post revisiting one of our favorite Impalas of all time....Allen Duke's 64. We posted it here a couple years ago when we stumbled across our friend Howard Gribble's collection. The red/silver scheme is an instant classic, with white interior, sitting on Supremes. But the previous incarnations stand on their own as well. To put it simply, Allen Duke had class. Whether the car was sitting in the driveway in simple 2 tone blue enamel, hitting the boulevard in lavender lace panels, or behind the velvet ropes in red and silver with cobwebbing, it made a statement that still resonates today. For me, it embodies the essence of what Los Boulevardos strives to achieve with our cars. Class and Style. I can't think of many builds that had more than Allen Duke's 64. Many thanks and respect to the Duke of Wilmington himself. And thank the car gods for Howard Gribble as well. He's responsible for blowing our minds yet again with this rare video footage and previously unreleased photos of the Allen Duke 64 cruising the streets in its various stages from 1968 to 1969. Forget everything you think you know about lowriding. This is what its all about.

Our sincere condolences go out to the family and friends of Fernando Ruelas and Dukes Car Club. Lowriding lost another one of its pioneers.

Thanks and Respect to Howard Gribble for sharing these with us.

Special Thanks to Brother Christiano in LA for the great shots

Peggy Martinez, Santa Cruz, NM 1980
64 Chevy

“The symbol of the car at first was just a car to me, but it became a coffin, a boudoir, a phallus. The cars do this sexy hydraulic hopping. They have these plush velvet interiors and wonderful imagery on the outside. I put the color photographs into a red velvet portfolio box lined with silver metallic paper and tied it with satin dice. It was important to me to contain them, especially in a sensual manner, because the cars themselves are containers of so many religious and sexual images. This was the first time I used materials to convey certain ideas.”

— Meridel Rubenstein, interview with John Bloom on December 15, 1987

Meridel Rubenstein began creating this series of portraits of “Lowriders” in northern New Mexico in 1979, following her first major series, La Gente de la Luz, a series of environmental portraits of New Mexicans from the mid-1970s. The Lowriders series was her first major work in color. Descendants of the “cruisers” of the 1950s, the Lowriders are notorious for driving through the streets in small Southwest towns at slow speeds and causing traffic jams. The Lowriders cut and chop the frames of their brightly painted vintage cars, creating highly personal works of art adorned with small murals, messages, and religious symbols. Some of the cars have an elaborate multi-battery powered hydraulic system which raises and lowers the front and rear ends of the vehicle. Originally exhibited with the cars as an “extended portrait” on Santa Fe’s main plaza on October 19, 1980, the photographs were later printed as a series of twelve for a limited-edition portfolio box.

Paul, Annabelle and Paula Medina, Chimayo
68 Impala NM, 1980

Rubenstein was inspired by the lowriders’ use of materials which create something sensual from something technological, and began her own experiments, making palladium prints on hand-coated watercolor paper. Quickly departing from the straight-forward documentary projects and environmental portraits that established her reputation, Rubenstein’s later work explores a variety of media, use of text, alternative processes, and sculpture, yet the themes of these pieces still tend to connect uniquely to New Mexico.


Meridel Rubenstein was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1948. She completed a bachelor’s degree in social science, with a film-making emphasis, at Sara Lawrence College (1970). While working on motion picture projects in Vermont, she began still photography in 1971. Minor White accepted her as a special Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student in photography for 1972-1973, where he introduced her to the large-format view camera before helping her to enroll in the photography program at the University of New Mexico where she completed an MA (1974) and an MFA (1977). She is the recipient of four National Endowment for the Arts grants (1978) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1981).

— Kendra Greene