When she’s cruising down Jefferson Boulevard in Dallas’ Oak Cliff neighborhood, it’s impossible to ignore Mercedes Mata.
It’s not just that her signature ride is a glimmering pink 1984 Chevy Monte Carlo — a car so captivating it’s been on display for the last four months at the Bullock Texas State History Museum — it’s that, at just 20 years old, she’s become an emerging talent in the city’s lowrider scene. Alongside her older sister Mariah, Mercedes is helping to usher in a lowrider renaissance — one driven by young “chingona” (aka badass) women.
Though the sisters might be a bit of an anomaly in the male-dominated community, their passion for cars runs in their blood. In 1979, their late uncle, Ivy Mata, founded Dallas’ first lowrider club, not long after the first such clubs began making their way to Texas in the late 1960s and early 1970s. After his passing in 1985, the group went on hiatus, and just as their father, Mark Mata, began putting the wheels in motion to revive it, he was incarcerated in 2004. At the time, Mercedes was an infant and Mariah was just four years old.
For eleven years, the sisters hardly knew their father. They wrote to him, and sometimes visited, but for them, it wasn’t much of a connection. When Mark was released in 2015, it felt like they were starting from scratch. As they were trying to get to know each other, cars became a natural entry point. Their dad opened up a body shop, Mata’s Art, restoring, customizing, and painting vehicles. Mariah quickly took an interest in the family business.
“We were always around them,” Mariah told The Barbed Wire earlier this month over the phone while hanging out at the shop with her sister. “We would just spend time in the car together, we would talk about cars, we’d be at my dad’s shop every weekend. Without even trying, it just became a part of my life.”
For Mercedes, it was a harder road. “Growing up, it was hard for me to even leave my room,” she said. “I’ve always struggled with depression and anxiety.” It wasn’t until her father had finished building out a ‘65 convertible that Mercedes finally agreed to go on a drive with him.
“I was in middle school, in my own world,” she told The Barbed Wire. “It was way harder for me and him to connect, and I wasn’t into cars right away, so I wouldn’t even go with them most of the time.”
Until she did. The feeling of being out on the road, windows down, surrounded by her family — it brought her out of her shell. “I just fell in love with it,” she said.
From there, she started studying the history of the cars. It’s been roughly eight decades since Chicanos in postwar Los Angeles began putting their own twist on the hot rod craze then sweeping the nation. Instead of modifying their vehicles to make them sleeker and faster, Mexican-American veterans adjusted the suspension, and added weights, creating the first lowriders. It was a form of expression — a way to display pride in their heritage through elaborate, mural-like designs, and as Mexican American workers made their way across the Southwest, it wasn’t long before the stylish vehicles made their way into Texas.
As Mercedes learned more about the scene’s history, she began familiarizing herself with the Chevy Impala (the quintessential lowrider). “That’s how me and my dad started bonding,” she remembers.
Soon, she was ready to take the next step: working on her own car. She scoped out a good first candidate: a white 1984 Chevy Monte Carlo, rusting in someone’s backyard. Her dad offered to buy it for her. But after that, he told her, everything would be up to her. “It didn’t run. It was sunk into the ground, but I started working on it with my own money,” she said with a laugh, remembering just how run-down the car used to be.
For the better part of three years, she worked on the sparkling rosé-and-neon car piece by piece. The process, like the car itself, can be slow — some lowriders are constant works in progress, with their drivers always thinking up a new addition or swapping out the colors.
It was a family effort, with Mercedes working on it at her dad’s shop, and her cousin, Joe Mata, handling the paint job. In total, she estimates that she’s put $40,000 into customizing the car (an amount she said is on the mid- to low-end compared to others in the scene). The final product was stunning: an eye-catching pink champagne metal flake paint job, with rose gold leaf pinstriping done by Dallas artist Lokey Calderon, a matching pink interior, rose gold rims, a silver heart chain-link steering wheel, pink furry dice, a rosary, and a mini Texas chingona “badass” license plate dangling from the rearview mirror. Topping it off is a mural of Mercedes in front of the Dallas skyline airbrushed onto the hood, courtesy of Dtownmuralz.
“I just wanted to do something different,” she said. With her pin-straight brown hair and glasses, Mercedes’ car is the polar opposite of her more low-key personal style that largely consists of baggy t-shirts and jeans. “I wanted to go outside of the box. Nobody has their car all flaked out in glitter. I wanted to go hard or go home, so I went hard and did everything pink and sparkly.”
In the end, all that was left was picking a name for her precious pink Monte Carlo. She went with “La Mera Mera,” a nickname that means “the boss” or “the best of the best” in Spanish. It’s a name given to Mercedes since she and her sister started cruising around Dallas. “There weren’t really any other girls with their own cars,” she said. “So when they would see us, that’s what they would say, ‘Here comes La Mera Mera.’”
It wasn’t only Dallas that took notice; the entire state did. It’s been a few months since Mercedes has taken La Mera Mera out on the road. Since April, it’s been one of seven cars featured in the “Carros y Cultura” exhibit at the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin. Among the other award-winning cars featured from clubs across the state, La Mera Mera is the only one designed by a woman.
Since the car has been on display, Mercedes’ lowridergirl214 social media accounts have blown up, with people reaching out to congratulate her or ask her for advice on starting to build their own first cars. “It still doesn’t feel real,” she said. “When the museum first reached out, I thought there was no way. I was speechless.”
Her sister isn’t surprised, though. “There’s nobody doing what she’s doing,” Mariah said. “Little girls, grown women, grown men are all congratulating her and giving her props, because she’s the youngest female in Texas to really have a car like this.”
Today, Mercedes and her 23-year-old sister are the youngest members of Dallas Lowriders. For them, this is just the beginning. Over the past nine years, they’ve watched the club, and the city’s lowrider scene, get a second life. The club veterans who were around in their uncle’s day have rejoined, but there are plenty of young faces, too. Together, they’ve revived a decades-old tradition, cruising down the predominantly Spanish-speaking Jefferson Boulevard on Sundays, as people from the neighborhood line up down the block to watch a parade of colorful cars.
It’s an activity that strikes at the heart of what lowriding is about: comunidad. Throughout the year, Dallas Lowriders organizes block parties, toy drives, and food drives around Thanksgiving.
“I just hope that we continue to keep inspiring people,” Mercedes told The Barbed Wire. “It’s all about keeping lowriding alive; we don’t want to ever see it die down.”
And as the Mata family is coming up on celebrating ten years reunited with their dad, Mercedes said the younger, harder years are now ancient history.
“For people to come up to me and say that I inspire them or that they’re proud of me, it feels insane,” she said. “I’m just so honored, because I’ve never felt that way before. I always felt different than everyone else, but now, it feels like my whole life has changed, and I can finally say that I am happy.”
In the fall, Mercedes and the Dallas Lowriders have their eyes on a few different car shows and competitions. But she already feels like she’s won. She and her sisters are living out the dream her uncle and father envisioned years ago: They’re making a name for themselves — and building on their family legacy — all while riding low and slow in Oak Cliff’s hood.