In the late 90′s i’d go hang out with my neighbour Daryel Blacktopp at his place and go through all his old New Zealand Hot Rod mags scouring for pictures of old cool hot rods and the possibility of a lowrider. I struck it once finding an image of the late Christchurch tattoist, Steve Johnsons ’56 Bel which i’m sure is the first lowrider to hit New Zealands shores. Here are some pretty rough images sent from Kenny from the Carnales from the magazine. I went and found Steves son Kelly at his Tattoo shop in Bromley ChCh to find out more about it. He remembers his Dad buying it Pomona in about ’86 off a Mexican gang member. The car was built in the late 70′s. Kelly remembers how noisy the hydraulics were as a kid and cruisng around Chch with his dad hitting switches was blowing peoples minds. There are a few more stories that Kelly had to share which i’ll post when he finds some photo’s from his Dads collection, and maybe some old VHS footage. Here is NZ’s first lowrider?
