Final cruise: Tribute to KC preacher who used lowrider car culture to impact his community

Editor's Note: This interview is part of an ongoing Star series highlighting Kansas Citians from historically under-represented communities and their impact on our region. The series builds on The Star's efforts to improve coverage of local communities. Do you know someone we should interview? Share ideas with our reporter J.M. Banks.

On the morning of Sept. 6, hundreds of mourners gathered at The Cure Church in Kansas City, Kansas, to pay their final respects to Efrain Gonzalez, affectionately known as “Preacher” to his family, friends and fellow lowrider comrades.

After the service, attendees poured from the church. Person after person recounted how Gonzalez, the pastor of Kansas City Restoration Church, had positively impacted their lives through his ministry.

Waiting there along the KCK street were 50 eye-catching, lowrider cars — painted bright reds, greens and blues with gold and chrome rimmed wheels, gleaming under the sunlight. Every car sat low to the road, ready to take one last ride with the pastor.

Gonzalez possessed hefty knowledge and a deep love for cars, particularly lowriders.

Lowrider cars allowed him to engage people of all ages who were struggling with homelessness and drug addiction. He learned about their troubles, challenges, fears and tried to help.

While for some outsiders lowrider conjures some negative connotations tied to gang culture, Gonzalez stood as a shining example of the true meaning of the lifestyle: community, tradition and family, which form a bond among lowriders.

Originally from Mexicali, Mexico, Gonzalez came to the United States and fell in love with lowriders and the culture. His son, Andy Gonzalez, 37, says that his father experienced a rough upbringing and used his early experiences to help people through their darkest times.

“He came from a family with 11 children and all my aunts and uncles were drug addicts,” Andy Gonzalez said. “They were all in trouble from a young age and my mom started going to church first, then my dad got a hold of God and got clean back in California.”

Gonzalez moved his family from California’s Imperial Valley to Kansas City, where he helped establish what was then a small KC lowrider scene. Fernando Rivera who has been part of the local lowrider scene for over a decade believes the numbers have steadily increased in the years he has been here.

The cultural phenomenon of lowriders can be traced as far back as the 1940s. Hispanic youths used glossy paint, chrome rims and hydraulics and transformed ordinary cars into artistic expressions of culture and tradition. Many cars are used as canvases for stunning murals depicting cultural images ranging from religious iconography to Mesoamerican mythology and portraits.

Ben Chappell, a professor of American studies at Kansas University who has studied lowrider culture for years, said the cars were a way for Hispanic communities to get involved with the American auto craze.

After the post-war automotive boom of the 1940s, the American public became obsessed with car culture and members of the Hispanic community began to add their own distinctive culture and personality to their cars. Lowriders became one of the first forms of definitive Hispanic style that still lives on today.

“It has become a source of identity for kind of the urban Mexican American,” Chappell said. “There is a lot of nostalgia in it with certain styles of interior like crushed velvet and the the chain wheel. There are certain things that are just identified as lowrider culture, and so in the Mexican American communities, it has kind of been a badge of where you’re from, or where you are.”

The purpose of the lowrider was to lower the suspension of the car making it closer to the ground, and it was meant to be driven slowly for a smooth cruise. This aspect of Hispanic car modifications was in contrast to the American tradition of customizing cars to achieve higher speeds. Lowrider owners wanted everyone to see the intricate details of the artwork on the car and the stylized look of their vehicle.

“Lowriding became a public performance. You don’t build a lowrider to keep in the garage and not let anyone see,” Chappell said.

As California began to crack down on the modified cars by requiring vehicles to sit up a certain height from the road, the practice of using hydraulics to raise the level of the car frame became widely utilized. As the popularity of the feature increased, lowrider owners designed vehicles they could raise and lower with a flip of a switch inside the vehicle, making the vehicle appear to bounce. Even as the crackdowns on car suspension were lifted, hydraulics remained a beloved feature.

“I have heard all kind of stories from them using discarded plane hydraulics to someone using parts from a trash truck. Nobody knows, but we do know they were resourceful,” Chappell said.

Lowrider culture has spread throughout different Southern Californian ethnic groups including the Black community. Today the lowrider style has spread from cars to trucks, motorcycles and even bicycles while making its way across the United States and now all over the world, with subcultures appearing in unexpected places like Japan.

With Gonzalez growing up in Southern California, the birthplace of lowriders, he saw firsthand how deep the customs and community went and how the culture was passed along from generation to generation.

“Cars were just a way of life, so I always remember being around cars,” said Gonzalez’s son, Andy Gonzalez.

Watching his father fix and restore old cars sparked a deep passion for lowriders in him. He treasures the memories of learning the intricacies of car maintenance from his father, who spent years working on his favorite Chevrolets. Now as a mechanic, working on cars full time, the skills and lessons he acquired while hanging out with his dad remain priceless to him.

For Gonzalez, the tradition of passing knowledge down is the basis of lowrider culture. And as an elder in the community, Preacher was well known for making sure young people knew the roots of the culture.

The culture began to become associated with Chicano street gangs more so than the community-based car clubs they were created as. But Kansas City lowriders debunk that stereotype as fallacy.

They say Hollywood stereotyping perpetuated that misconception with films like “Blood In, Blood Out” and “Mi Vida Loca” along with the emergence of Chicano gangster rap, and so the lowrider and many aspects of the culture remain negatively conflated with popular media depictions.

Rivera, who drove a lowrider in the procession and has been immersed in the culture since he was young, is grateful to people like Gonzalez for challenging preconceived notions.

“I want to say it first started because people didn’t understand the culture,” Rivera said. “They see street people or hooligans as they would call us. The reputation grew and it was wrong how people thought, but we always showed love and respect to all communities and do our own thing.”

Originally from El Paso, Texas, Rivera knew Gonzalez for over a decade and witnessed how Gonzalez leveraged his influence in the lowrider community to make a positive impact. He came to see Gonzalez as a familiar presence at car shows, cookouts, and First Fridays on Southwest Boulevard.

He observed how the late preacher worked to shift the narrative.

“Here in KC, we are very family oriented,” Andy Gonzalez said. “Definitely no drama because we always have all our kids around. So, we consider ourselves one big family.”

Gonzalez, who owns two lowrider cars, thinks that many people only see the images on TV or in movies. Most lowrider owners are everyday people, he said.

“A lot of people in the ’80s and ’90s saw lowriders like gangbangers and cholos,” Gonzalez said. “But when you meet these guys, they have jobs, they are family men, workers and welders. Some of them are into bad stuff, but the majority are good people who work on cars.”

“The gangster connotation is something that has always been a part of car culture and mechanic culture,” Chappell said. “The idea of motorcycle gangs, drag racers and there’s a bit of a rebellious aspect of it.”

According to his son, Gonzalez was never one for the over-the-top designs on a car worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Instead, he modestly worked on a car over years and improved on it before eventually selling it and starting the process again. His last car was a 1960 Chevy Impala known as the Black Rose. Though his cars may have changed over the years, one facet that Gonzalez kept the same was his car horn, a loud fire truck-sounding honk that was highly recognizable to all who knew him.

Marisa Moreno has known Gonzalez since the early 90s and watched as he became a beloved father figure to the entire KC lowrider community. She was responsible for organizing the procession of lowriders that escorted Gonzalez to the cemetery for his burial. She believes that this was the best way to show respect to a man who spent so much time building and influencing the culture.

“He took the lowrider scene by storm when he came to Kansas City back in 1993 and everybody knew him because he impacted us all by sharing his story,” Moreno said.

When Moreno reached out to various car clubs and others in the local lowrider community to plan the final ride for Gonzalez, she received responses from 50 car owners and anticipated that perhaps half would attend. On the day of the funeral, all 50 lowriders from across Kansas City and Kansas City, Kansas, were present along with 10 motorcycles.

As the procession crossed the state line, from Kansas into Missouri, people along the traveled route stopped to watch the beautifully painted and shining lowriders of varying makes, models and colors cruising through the city.

“We know he would be proud to see how much we have pulled together to make sure the procession goes exactly how it should,” Moreno said.

The procession of over 100 cars, including those that were not lowriders, started at The Cure Church in KCK and traveled 18 miles to Mount Washington Cemetery in Independence.

Rivera was grateful he could participate in the tribute.

“It is an honor more than anything,” Rivera said. “He was an icon here in Kansas City, and I am happy I am able to pay respects to him in this way.”

After the burial, Gonzalez’s family and friends gathered at a Kansas City park for a cookout. Old-school Mexican music blared from inside of the parked lowriders. The sadness of the funeral was replaced with laughter and dancing. Because that is how Preacher rolled.

Gonzalez’s son, Andy, said he finds comfort in knowing his father impacted many lives and that he was touched by the lowrider tribute. He knows now he has to keep the traditions his father taught him alive and pass them on to the next generation.

“It makes me very proud just because everybody respected him,” the younger Gonzalez said. “It is a little intimidating ’cause I know I can’t fill those big shoes. I have a couple cars, but the main thing is passing down the lessons and love he gave to people.”