Abraham Lopez is your typical lowrider who's not in your typical place. Newark, New Jersey, hardly rates as one of the "top 10" places to find a lowrider, but that hasn't stopped "Abe" from building one phat ride. And we don't use the word "build" lightly. Abe has quite the talented set of hands, performing most of the work on the car himself in his home garage. Being a mechanic by trade and a car enthusiast at heart, Abe's '85 Olds Cutlass has garnered the respect of lowriders far and wide.
Abe has spent plenty of time at car shows checking out the latest trends. In the end, Abe followed his heart and ignored conventional thinking and what the so-called "veteranos" dictated a lowrider to be. Abe realized that there are differences between the way cars are built in different places and embraced that fact, but still built a car that garners respect wherever it goes.
This Garden State Cutlass started like many of the projects that we feature, beginning as just your ordinary daily driver. Abe bought this car in '86 and drove it for a few years before the old "let me do a few things to fix it up" syndrome hit. Many readers are now starting to feel their parallel worlds collide as the story takes an all-too familiar turn.
As the world turned, the car came together with some familiar and some not so familiar aspects to certain parts of the country. Take the tires for instance; those of you on the "right coast" know about the "mustard and mayo" Vogue "tyres" and there are others who consider this not a "lowrider" tire. Abe's okay with that and so are we. He also took the power approach to his engine/tranny combo. You might have noticed the Lenco-type shifter for the auto tranny and the NOS in the back seat. Believe us when we tell you that this is one mean-sounding car.
But all of this doesn't mean a lot to Abe right now, as by the time that you read this, the car will be undergoing a ground-up rebuild. Abe informed us that he recently spent a little time in the hospital having some metal removed from his eye suffered shortly into the rebuild. Being different sometimes has its costs in blood, sweat and tears, but in the end, Abe's just happy to be a lowrider taking the car to shows and wowing the competition with "Pure Elegance."