Ramone (Chevrolet Impala Lowrider with Air Ride) - Disney Cars
Ramone is an air suspension equipped 1959 Chevrolet Impala low-rider car who owns Ramone's House of Body Art, the local custom body and paint shop where he paints himself and other vehicles. His philosophy is cruise low and slow. He is juiced with hydraulics, chrome undercarriage. He owns the slickest car paint shop in the West but hasn’t had a customer in years and no-one left to impress with his low-rider tricks. Ramone keeps himself busy by repainting himself on a daily basis. This Chevy Impala really wants is the chance to cruise low and slow with his wife Flo. His license plate reads "L0WNSL0", which is a reference to his catchphrase, "low and slow".
A lowrider is a car or truck which has had its suspension system modified (sometimes with hydraulic suspension) so that it rides as low to the ground as possible. Lowriders often have user controlled height adjustable suspension. Lowriders are very often classic cars from the 1950s which rode low to begin with, although large numbers of 1940s and 1960s cars are also modified, and to a lesser degree newer vehicles. The word is also used to refer to those who drive or own such cars. A lowrider will traditionally have many factory offered accessories / options and often many after-market accessories added. As a result of the modifications, many lowriders are not street-legal vehicles.
The 1964 Chevy Impala hardtop or convertible is one of the most popular lowriders, and to a lesser extent other 1958-1964 Impalas. Although the 1961-64 Chevrolet Impala is usually sought after by car collectors, vehicles including the 1978-88 GM G-bodies (which includes the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Buick Regal, Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, and Pontiac Grand Prix) and their 1973-77 relatives are usually seen as entry-level lowriders. Although heavy customization of the cars is popular in the lowrider scene, some lowriders pass for restored stock cars, especially those based on 1930s-1960s American cars. In some countries, other cars like the Volvo PV544, Morris Minor, air-cooled VW Beetle, Ford Zodiac, Vauxhall Victor and Vauxhall Cresta (and other cars with Trans-Atlantic styling) are often used as substitutes for American cars. This is generally due to the lack of American car imports, costs or even a desire to build a unique lowrider out of a domestically produced vehicle.
Lowriders were originally unique to Mexican & Chicano culture in Los Angeles County, then became part of Californian and south-western American urban culture as a whole. The aim of the lowriders is to cruise as slowly as possible, "Low and Slow" ("Bajito y Suavecito") being their motto. Since the early 1990s, lowriders have become common in urban youth culture in general, primarily in West Coast hip hop. Today, the lowriding scene is diverse with many different cultures, vehicle makes and visual styles, however, it remains an important part of the Chicano community. One of the most popular places for lowriders has always been Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles. Essentially all the options available to today's custom automobile creator are also available to the lowrider builder, and lowrider style varies greatly from region to region.
The cars had lots of chrome, flashy hubcaps, and a deliberate tail-dragging attitude, often helped along by bags of sand in the trunk. A Chevy was often the car of choice, especially the so-called Chevy Bombs. In Cars, Ramone knows his way around customizing cars. The owner of the town's body shop, Ramone's House of Body Art, he's an artist with paint and metal but hasn't had a car to paint in years. So he repaints himself daily. He's married to his long-time sweetheart, Flo, a classic show car who runs the town diner. And while he waits for his chance to paint Lightning McQueen, his philosophy is to "cruise low and slow and look good doing it."
Many lowrider cars feature custom hydraulic suspensions that allow the driver to alter the car ride height at will. These systems range from simple to complex and are usually measured by the number of hydraulic pumps (Generally 2 to 4) used to control the various hydraulic combinations that ultimately produce a specific motion from the vehicle. These pumps are powered by multiple batteries installed in a rack in the trunk of the vehicle. The speed at which the car lifts depends partly on the voltage generated by these batteries, which can range from 24 all the way up to 124 volts. The most common motions are dipping / raising the four corners of the vehicle (referred to as corners), dipping/raising the front or rear of the vehicle (front, back), dipping / raising the sides of the vehicles (side to side), and lowering/raising the vehicle as a whole (pancake). A skilled switch operator can manipulate his controls (hitting switches) to raise one wheel completely off the ground (3-wheel motion), or to hop one end of the car completely off the ground.
Summer is the most popular season for lowriders, as the weather often encourages being outside either in or nearby the vehicle. Some lowrider clubs have weekly meetings in the summer where owners and friends will have a BBQ / cookout followed by cruising a popular drag (or strip) after dark. Aside from local drags and their parking lots, lowriders are most commonly seen at privately organized lowrider car shows that often feature a variety of different vehicular and non-vehicular events, the most popular of which are the wet T-shirt/bikini contests and the hop and dance hydraulic competitions where competitors compete against each other to see who can hop the highest or complete a list of moves within a time limit (dancing). There are several magazines devoted to presenting, preserving, and chronicling lowrider culture, the best known of which is Lowrider Magazine, currently published by Primedia.
Few cars typify post-war California like the hot rod and the low-rider, while the hot rod cars were the star of movies. California's large and growing Hispanic population favored the low-rider.
Hot rods, built for speed, were often fenderless and were often Ford cars. Lowrider cars were far more aesthetically pleasing.
The Chevrolet Impala was, through 1996, a full-sized automobile built by General Motors for their Chevrolet division. The Impala was reintroduced in 2000 as a full-size front-wheel-drive car. Ed Cole, Chevrolet's chief engineer in the late 1950s, defined Chevrolet Impala as a "prestige car within the reach of the average American citizen."
From 1958 until 1965, the Impala was Chevrolet's most expensive full-size car. In 1965, Chevrolet introduced the more-expensive Caprice.
In the late sixties, the Impala was typically positioned just below the top luxury trim, the Caprice, and above the more economical models like the Biscayne or the Bel Air. The Impala, named for a southern African antelope, is most readily distinguished by a pair of three rather than two taillights at its rear. It competed in the market against other full-size cars such as the Ford Galaxie 500 and the Plymouth Fury.
One of both General Motors' and America's most successful auto nameplates, the Impala was often the best-selling automobile in its formative years when full-sized cars dominated sales. The 1965 sales of over one million units in the U.S. still stands as a record. From 1958 through 1996, Impala sales were in excess of 13 million, more than any other full-size car in the history of the automobile. The current version of the Impala is the 8th best selling vehicle (of any kind) and 5th best selling car in the United States and has the distinction of being the top selling American nameplate sedan, according to Reuters Top 20 Best-selling Vehicles Scorecard for the calendar year of 2007.
The Impala name was first used for the Corvette-based show car at the 1956 General Motors Motorama. Painted emerald green metallic, with a white interior, the Impala featured hardtop styling. The Impala name was "resurrected" for the 2000 model year to replace the mid-size Lumina. It was built at the Oshawa Car Assembly in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. Unlike the earlier Impalas, this one was front-wheel drive and was available with a choice of two V6 engines. This car was based on the GM W platform. A new Impala SS with a supercharged V6 was brought out for the 2004 model year.
In 2007, the Impala began to replace the Monte Carlo on the NASCAR stock car racing circuit; more specifically, on all the scheduled racing events where NASCAR has mandated the use of a car with different (and some) new specifications, better known as the Car of Tomorrow, it was recently announced that in 2008 the Impala will be the only Chevrolet nameplate on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
Ramone is the third Disney character to be voiced by Cheech Marin, the other two being Tito the chihuahua from Oliver & Company and Banzai the hyena from The Lion King.
