New Mexico celebrates hydraulics and heritage with lowrider car holiday State lawmakers are embracing New Mexico's time-honored culture of transforming customized lowrider cars into rolling canvases of artistic expression and a source of community pride.
Legislators including state Sen. Leo Jaramillo also are drafting a bill this year that would enshrine the lowrider as New Mexico's state vehicle — alongside the roadrunner as state bird and the spikey yucca state flower.
Decades later, an MTV crew documented New Mexico lowrider traditions and labeled the Española valley as the “lowrider capital of the world.”.
Democratic state Rep. Cynthia Borrego said lowriders are intertwined with memories of growing up in small-town New Mexico and cruising in cars on weekends during the 1970s and '80s.
Jaramillo says the Upper Rio Grande Valley emerged as the cradle of lowrider car culture in the 1960s as Vietnam War mechanics brought their skills to bear on customized cars.
