OVERVIEW
This content section features dedicated custom car and lowrider magazines that were printed in the United States. Although men and women were customizing from the earliest days of automobile, the cars of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s were especially popular for treatment. These cars were featured in dedicated custom car magazines in the 1950s and 1960s. On the other hand, lowrider vehicles have been around since the 1940s and were the original customs. But dedicated lowrider magazines didn't appear until the 1970s with the full emergence of the Chicano Movement.

Besides the titles shown on the left navigation panel and in the graphic below, other custom, kustom and lowrider titles were printed for which we are still missing information or complete cover images. Click HERE to see these other titles.

The image below shows the lineage and life span of these titles. Since many general hot rodding magazines also covered customs, look in general hot rod titles for more examples.

HISTORY OF CUSTOMS:
There is both a broad and narrow definition of a custom car. The broad one defines a custom car as any vehicle that has a modified or stylized body and is fabricated by a coachbuilder, is a modified production vehicle, or is built from the ground up. The narrow definition, as used by Kustom Kemps of America (KKOA), is that customs had to be applied to cars manufactured between 1936 and 1964. These cars were modified by hot rodders and designed for style rather than speed like a traditional hot rods. Typical styling features included chopped tops, fender skirts, lowered ride height, filled body seams, rounded corners, lengthened fenders, and wide whitewalls with wheel covers (like "spinners", "flippers" or Sombreros). Rodders also wanted to stylize with components that made the cars appear more expensive or unique, and so they used grills and other components from Cadillacs, Packards and Buicks as an example.

Using the narrow defintion, the first customs were built when the "fat-fendered" cars came from American factories in 1935. The styling was appled most commonly to '39 to '51 Mercurys, '36 to '51 Fords, and '40 to '54 Chevrolets. The customizers, most who had started with hot rods, wanted more stylish closed cars with more comfort. Customizing in this described style was well established by the late 1930s, and when soldiers returned home from WW2, the custom car trend really began. Most knowledgeable people say the period from 1947 through 1957 was the "golden age" of these cars. However, customizing continued in some form, was diminished by new cars built by US manufacturers from 1955 through 1958, and was pretty much dead as a hobby by the 1960s with the emergence of muscle cars. These more modern cars gave owners both speed and style, so there was no need to spend all the money to build a custom. Hot rods got a rebirth in the early 1970s with the street rod movement, and traditional customs weren't far behind when renewed interest in them began in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

In this golden age, there were four primary magazines that were dedicated to customs. These are noted on the timeline above. However, multiple magazines had considerable custom car content including Motor Trend (1949 to 1958), Rod & Custom in the 1950s and 1960s, Car Speed & Style, Rodding and Restyling, Car Craft also in the 1950s and 1960s, Custom Rodder and Motor Life.

HISTORY OF LOWRIDERS:
Lowrider cars are similar in appearance to traditional custom cars, but they have evolved out of a distinct culture compared to the hot rodder culture after World War 2. Customizing traditions by Chicanos (people born with Mexican or Spanish descent living in the Southwest U.S.) began in the 1940s, and Hispanics were major customizers during the golden age. But in the 1960s, rods and customs all went in different evolutionary directions -- hot rods evolved to drag cars, customs evolved to more car show and television "car stars", and the new street rods also evolved with new technology. But it was only the Chicano customizers that stayed with the traditional approaches from the golden age.

There are more lowrider magazines than dedicated custom car magazines. The first serious title, Low Rider, set the tone and direction. It had a strong lifestyle aspect, and many other magazines tried to copy its success. When Low Rider ended in 1985, the real "big dog" was the revamped Lowrider. Most every other title shown in the timeline above tried to either out-do or differentiate from this large competitor.

An excellent reference on the history of custom cars was written by Pat Ganahl and titled,"The American Custom Car".

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