In the hyper-competitive world of newsstand sales, a magazine's cover design and its contents usually determine how well an issue will sell. Consider Lowrider, the car magazine that's been promoting the lowered-car lifestyle since 1977. Every month it finds itself shelved in the "Transportation" or "Automotive" sections at newsstands, its 200-plus glossy pages duking it out with Custom Rodder, Rodz, and Muscle Car Review, to name a few. How do Lowrider editors and designers attract customers and persuade them to part with the five-buck cover price? Let's deconstruct the August issue.

 

The staples of a Lowrider cover are a well-proportioned, barely dressed young lady standing next to, or straddling, some part of a custom car painted apricot, fuchsia, or possibly jewel blue. Frame these two objects of desire with a catchy cover line that may or may not be a double entendre, fill in the background with some complementary fruity colors, and you've created the periodical equivalent of a Popsicle. It wasn't always such a colorful world for Lowrider, which began in the San Jose bedrooms of two college students, Sonny Madrid and Larry Gonzales. "If Chicano culture is a subculture of a community, then lowriding was a subculture of the Chicano community," says Gonzales. The original issue featured cars and modestly dressed girls, but also featured a political rant against the sitcom "Chico and the Man" for misrepresenting Chicano life. The political message has evaporated-what once was a homegrown affair is now owned by Primedia, the billion-dollar media conglomerate-and so too have many of the models' clothes. Lowrider publishes an alternative cover, sans babe, to appease "family friendly" businesses such as Auto Zone and Blockbuster.

 

Lowrider settled on its arching, gold-plated nameplate in 1978, after a year of experimenting with both an "Old English" and a somewhat robotic-looking font. "A lot of [the lowrider car clubs] started out having that arched look or shape to their plaque," says Gene Coo, one of the magazine's art directors, referring to the accessory commonly displayed in the rear windows of club members' cars. "Publishers in the past wanted as little of the logo covered [by a model] as possible," says Coo. Current management isn't opposed to a pretty face obscuring a letter here and there. One thing remains constant, though. When Muñoz and Coo changed the lettering to silver for the magazine's 25th anniversary issue, the staff rebelled. When it comes to the Lowrider name, it's got to represent in gold.

Sex sells, so for the staff at Lowrider a hot cover model is almost as important as a hot car. In the August issue, Sheena Lee, a 22-year-old Dallas native, nabbed the cover. Sheena represents the new breed of Lowrider babe. In the past, the girls have been mostly Latina-dark hair, dark complexion-but the models have become more diverse as lowrider culture breaks into the mainstream. In the future, models such as Sheena, a mix of Filipino, Chinese, and German, will grace the cover more often. "We get a lot of letters that say leave the girls out," says Coo. Sometimes irate readers even accuse the mag of misrepresenting lowrider culture when a model's physical features don't match the traditional look. But don't expect the staff to take these suggestions too seriously. They know that babes sell fantasy-and newsstand copies.

 

Landing a cover of Lowrider is the equivalent of winning a Grammy or Oscar for many customizers and car owners. It's a stamp of legitimacy from the Lowrider staff. When Johnny Borrego spotted this abandoned '81 Cadillac Coupe De Ville at a San Antonio body shop, he knew it had the potential to become a great lowrider. He forked out $1,200 for it and took it to Fabian Villareal, the owner of Kandy Kustoms in Corpus Christi. Borrego literally wanted to pimp his ride, to get it somewhere in the pages of Lowrider, as well as win car shows and the $1,000 prize money that comes with it. Villareal got to work. He took the car apart lug nut by lug nut, sandblasting here, chrome-plating there. He candy-flaked the frame, brought in a muralist John Faenz to airbrush fleshy likenesses of Pamela Anderson, Kristy Swanson, and Carmen Electra, and he got the coupe clean because "clean is the name of the game." Eight months and $34,000 later, Borrego had his dream car. Impalas from the late '50s and early '60s are Lowrider reader favorites, so getting the cover? That was beyond Borrego's wildest dreams. Coo and Muñoz designed to look dynamic, like the car is driving off the page. Because it's all about snagging eyeballs at the newsstand.

 

"He's like an old zoot-suit Mexican," says Muñoz of Lowrider Man, the magazine's official symbol of coolness. Throughout the pages of Lowrider, Lowrider Man punctuates ends of sentences, is ironed on to merchandise, and sometimes slips onto the cover in a "Where's Waldo?" sort of way. Originally designed by co-founders Madrid and Gonzales, and modeled after Madrid, Lowrider Man pops up on about half of the covers, either dropped into lettering, as in this issue, or transposed subliminally onto a model's clothing where only the most perceptive reader might pick him out. Lowrider Man is the anti-Eustice Tilley, whose top hat and monocle helped define the wit, irony, and sophistication of the New Yorker. From behind a pair of dark shades, this confrontational Chicano from the days of disco wears a frowning pencil-thin mustache and looks you right in the eye from beneath a Mafioso fedora.

 

Throughout the year Lowrider publishes theme issues highlighting a region or country's lowrider culture. Past issues have documented the German and Japanese scenes, but in the August ‘'05 issue, Texas lowriders get their star turn. Red, white, and blue aren't just the colors of the Texas flag; they're emblematic of what many consider the All-American state. Coo chose the Black Oak font to emphasize the size and feel of the West.

 

The double entendre "cover your assets" imparts a grown-up message inside the mag. In this case "covering your assets" plays on the familiar phrase to draw readers' attention to appraisal and insurance suggestions. As you can see, very few cover lines interfere with the two primary objects of desire.

 

Models bring their own clothes to their cover shoots, but Sheena was outfitted with a Lowrider tank-top by the staff. Branding is the name of the game in magazine publishing, and well-placed merchandise will help define the Lowrider brand-and the attitude that comes with it.