Riding low as high art: Show merges custom cars, museum works

LOS ANGELES - Lowrider cars these days are far more than tricked-out automobiles with gravity-challenged rear suspensions and ear-rattling exhaust systems that seem to cry out for police to ticket the drivers.

In their finest format, they have morphed into museum-quality works of art, appearing in shows around the world from Paris' Louvre to Washington's Smithsonian.

But while museumgoers have learned to appreciate these creatures that sprang from the garages of US teenagers in the years after World War II, lowrider historian Denise Sandoval says the eye-popping, airbrushed paintings, plush interiors and chrome-plated wheels and engines that have come to define them have quietly fomented something more a new genre of contemporary art.