Meet the Tovar brothers-a tight-knit group whose family values have transcended through each other into their cars through their family pride. These values were instilled into them by their father, Amador, and mother, Mary Barba, who were married in 1952. Their oldest son, Eddie, who helped begin this bit of family history, told us how they started out in the early '50s in Southern California and later settled in the Hawaiian Gardens in 1959, where they live to this day. "Basically our dad was a car guy before he even met our mother," Eddie says. "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 it. It was a super-nice, big-dollar car for its day."
Amador was an airplane fabricator for Douglas Aircraft. This enabled him to teach his older boys the value of good honest work, how to properly use their mechanical skills, and how to work and interact with each other. Later on they developed people skills, which, along with their automotive knowledge, would lead to their basic beliefs. As the years passed, their father's health waned. Several heart attacks had taken its toll and Amador was homebound until his passing from a fatal heart attack in 1969. With help from maternal and paternal grandparents, Mary, before her passing, was able to bring up their daughter and four boys and raise them to be tight, to help one another when someone needed a hand, to always watch out for one another, and to keep an eye out for each other.
Eddie's latest ride is a '54 Chevy pickup, which is very similar to his Grandpa Pete's, who actually bought his in 1954. The truck is homage to his grandfather whom the family loved dearly. Prior to that he had a '48 Chevy Fleetline that was "oh so slammed" with a fierce green finish. "As I was growing up he said, 'Mijo, this truck is going to be yours when you get old enough to have it,' and so he kept his promise. When I became of age he gave me the truck, and that's when I started lowriding. I lowered it, put some chrome rocket wheels on it, and then eventually went to Tru Spokes. We couldn't afford to take our cars to body shops so we learned on our own," Eddie says. "When my father was still with us, the garage was full of his tools and the way I got started was 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 and then one day 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 take it apart. My dad told me that we had all the tools, so I had to take it apart. I took apart in about an hour and a half and then he told me it threw a rod so I needed to put a new rod in it. So he gave me the rod (at the time we had a garage full of parts) and he told me to put it back together. I thought, put it back together? He 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 my dad helped me. So I got it back together and it ran, so that was actually my first experience with working on anything mechanical. After that we got mini bikes, which sometimes broke, and we had lowrider bikes, which my dad used to paint for us, complete with spotlights and chrome fenders, sissy bars, and those metal flake seats."
Paul Tovar used to work part-time after school so he could get his first car, a '57 Chevy, which he spotted at a neighbor's house on the way home one day. At first the owner didn't want to sell it, but Paul was persistent and the former owner told Paul that if he had $300 the car was his to buy. A couple of days later Paul was able to scrape up the money to buy the car. Why did Paul want that particular car? "My dad had one, only his was a four-door that was nice. We used to have this tree house out front and in it I had a picture of my dad's car and that picture was a reminder of what I wanted to get," Paul says. "I was about 10 years old, but that was my motivation." With help from his uncle to drag the car home, he later realized that the tires needed air and that the carburetor needed primed to make it start. One of the first things Paul did was put on a set of Dynasty rims. He bought them and a set of 5.20 tires from a tire shop off Atlantic Boulevard in East L.A. and immediately hit the boulevard for some good-old cruising.
Donald Tovar's first car was a '48 Chevy, which he got when he was about 15 years old. He picked it up from one of Eddie and Paul's friends' dad. It was sitting in their backyard, and he got it for about $500. At the time, however, their mom wouldn't let Donald have the car because she felt he was too young to own a car, plus it didn't have an engine that was in running condition. Donald already knew how to drive, but kept the car hidden at his uncle's house until it was the right time to tell his mom that he'd gotten a car. It would be years before he could bring it home, and when he did his mom wasn't too happy. He had to get it out of there and keep it somewhere else for a few years before his mom said it was OK for him to keep it. Meanwhile, he did have a '66 Chevy Caprice that ran. Eddie helped him with a few things, like the wheels on the car; this was around 1975 or so. Most of the time, as young as they were when they got their first cars, they couldn't legally drive, so their mom was really looking out for them. The only problem was these guys already knew what they wanted and how to do many things.