In this milestone year, the LHoF Executive Committee will proudly induct into the 2009 Lowrider Hall of Fame Mr. Louis Barrios, Memorial Honor; Mr. Eddie Tovar, Craftsmanship Honor; Mr. Harvey Reyes, Leadership Honor; and Mr. Richard Ochoa, Lifetime Contributor Honor. Come join the lowrider community on September 12 at the Long Beach Hilton for a night of celebration and admiration for their own. You truly don't want to miss it! Paz.
Craftsmanship Honor
Designer, builder or artist in creating original and outstanding vehicles, also, exhibiting these vehicles for a consistent period of time.
The Tools of a Family Tradition
The humble Tovar brothers are second generation car customizers who are no strangers to the pages of Lowrider or the lowriding world. For over 30 years, the siblings have cemented their legacy and expressed themselves through their visions of slammed-to-the-ground custom bombs. We had the pleasure of catching up with Eddie, the oldest of the five siblings, to gain some insight on how the Tovars got started in lowriding, a passion steeped within family tradition thanks to the influence of their beloved father. In his own words, Eddie takes us on a journey through family, creativity, and the love of classic cars.
"Our dad was a car guy before he even met our mother. Back then, he had lowered Chevys, which were really lowriders according to today's terms. The nicest car he ever had was a jet black '46 Chevy Fleetline. He ran fender skirts and Appleton spotlights on the car, it was a super-nice, big-dollar car for its day. My dad was an airplane fabricator for Douglas Aircraft so he was very mechanically inclined, he could build anything as long as he had the right tools, and could still make due if he needed to. At an early age he taught us the value of good honest work, mechanical skills, and how to work and interact with each other. As the years passed, our father was diagnosed with an enlarged heart because of a clogged artery. Several heart attacks in a six-year span took its toll on my dad, until his passing from that last heart attack in 1969. His death brought our family closer together, as we all picked up the slack trying to fill his void. I went from being a boy, to becoming a man as I was the oldest of the kids. With help of my grandparents, my mom was able to bring us up, raise us to be tight, and help one another when someone needed a hand, all the while encouraging us to always look out for one another.
When my father was still with us, his garage full of his tools enabled me to have my first experience with practical mechanics. I got my start when my dad gave me a lawn mower to go out and cut lawns so I could make money for my things. I started doing lawns for the neighbors until one day when the lawn mower blew up. I told my dad what had happened to the mower and he told me to bring it into the garage and see if we could find out what was wrong with it. He told me that we had all the tools, so I would have to take it apart. After about an hour and a half, I had it completely taken apart, and found out the problem. Dad told me it threw a rod so I needed to put a new rod in it. He gave me the rod (at the time we had a garage full of parts) and told me to put it back together. I shot him a bewildered look and thought, "put it back together?!?" He smiled and said, "yeah, you know how you took it apart, so just put it back together." So I tried. It took me a day or two to put it back but with my father's help, I did it. I felt a great accomplishment as not only had I put it back together, but it also ran perfectly, so that was actually my first experience with working on anything mechanical.