The Crazed Auto Club

Manny Pacheco is into low-riding. He has cool green eyes and an easy smile and he works as a file clerk supervisor in downtown Brooklyn. He has lived on the same street in Cypress Hills for 22 of his 24 years. The neighborhood is ragged but lively. Children ride their bikes in the street, and down the block a group of young men is playing a three-dice game called cee-lo on the sidewalk.

Manny, David and Dave are standing outside Manny's house. They're all childhood friends, and all members of the Crazed Auto Club, a low-riding club Manny started in 1999.

What is low-riding? It's cool, casual, personalized and, of course, low. "Oh yes," says Manny, "you've gotta be riding low."

In the 1930s Chicano zoot-suiters in California used to put sandbags in the trunk of a Chevy to bring down the back; the essence of low-riding is still the suspension. Beyond that, however, the esthetic is hard to define. Like modern art, low-riding means both everything and nothing. Like obscenity, you're meant to know it when you see it.

Dave owns a 1996 Ford Explorer. He's got air on four wheels and he's removed the spare tire to make room for his compressor. He flicks a chrome-plated switch and the car whooshes down on one side like a kneeling bus. Another flick of the switch and it pops upright again. In the back there are two massive speakers and an array of audio controls.

"I customized the audio box, and all this right here is for my music. I've got a 6-inch pullout tv on the dash, and I just added a 15-inch drop-down DVD for the back seat."

I ask Dave if he ever takes his truck to the car shows, but he waives me off modestly. "Actually, I just started. I need to do a lot of body modifications before I want to, you know, compete with the big boys."

While Dave is a newcomer, Manny has been low-riding for years. I ask him how he got into it.

"I think it was when I first picked up a Lowrider Magazine. I always wanted to have a nice car that I personalized to my interest. I love cars." He owns a 1990 Honda Civic and estimates he's spent roughly $10,000 on it. "The car itself was only two grand. I went to a salvage yard where they have a lot of repossessed cars and stuff like that?907 title. I picked it up for a decent price with low mileage and I thought I could do something with it."

Since then he's turned the Civic into a Euro-style low-rider with air, 17-inch Enkei rims and a spoiler kit. Running across the rear windshield there's a Crazed Auto Club sticker Manny designed himself. "Yeah, I actually drew it up on a napkin. I used to work at SpeedWorld doing graphics, so I just scanned it in and it became my logo."

My favorite touch is that he's removed the door handles and rigged the car alarm to pop the doors open. It gives the car a smoother look. "Just a little body mod you do for extra points."

Manny competed for the first time a few years ago and he hopes to be ready again in time for the summer's big event: the Celebrity Car Show hosted by Funkmaster Flex out in Englishtown, NJ, on Aug. 3. "It's like a show/competition," says Manny. "People could come just to spectate but the people that enter their cars are there for a contest. They've got different categories and styles?mild custom and radical custom. Mine is going to be radical. Then the judges, they'll go around the car and whoever's got the cleanest car, the most originality, that's what it comes down to."

Manny points inside the Civic to show off his Acura leather seats and the Integra console, but when we get around to the front end his face falls a little. He recently added some BMW headlights and a BMW grille, but the left side is all smashed up. "Yeah, that was my little accident. Actually I just got up in the morning, drove to the corner and somebody was driving on the wrong side of the street. He just clobbered me."

He appears to have taken the loss in stride. Some low-riders keep two cars, a custom car and an everyday car, but Manny doesn't see the point. The Honda is his everyday car. "Me, no matter what, I want to drive it. That's why I put the work into it. I want to enjoy it. I just always want to have a flashy car."