A ’65 Impala SS sitting so low you could barely slide a piece of paper between the underbody and the asphalt? It must be a lowrider! Sure, that’s what happens in the case of many such Chevys, but the one greeting us today in rendering form, which is aired out—all the air has been let out of its custom springs—has found a totally different purpose, being more of a widerider instead.
Yes, widerider is a word we made up to describe a machine that’s had its track increased, hence also requiring a widebody, while also being lowered, with the result being focused more on the driving dynamics rather than the stance that dominates lowrider builds.
The latter were born back in the mid/late 1940s as a counterculture and sending a message that went against the mainstream Anglo culture required driving “low and slow”. Well, there’s nothing about a widerider that stands for limited velocity. Heck, these things look fast even when standing still, as this elaborate 3D work from digital artist Dom Host (aka altered_intent) easily demonstrates.
Back in 1958 when GM introduced the Impala, this skipped the traditional perimeter frame, introducing a X-frame that featured rails positioned as an elongated “X”. And while Chevy engineers explained this increased torsional rigidity and improved vertical packaging, albeit at the cost of passive safety, its customization-friendly nature propelled the Impala onto the lowrider scene.
Well, this is a 1965 Chevrolet Impala SS
1965 was the first year of the Gen IV Impala, which went back to a perimeter frame (please not the said safety drawback of the X-frame) and seems like the perfect starting point for a virtual project the pixel master dubbed “Imposter”.
The sexier lines of the ’65 are remastered via the sort of extreme aero upgrades you’d expect to find on a racecar. And while the front end, with its massive bumper, is impressive and the profile mixes overfenders with a side exhaust setup that stands out on its own, it’s the minimalist posterior that ticks all the right boxes for us.
The said model year was the final one with the triple headlights for the full-size Chevy and their presence is accentuated via a generously-sized wickerbill, while the shaved bumper makes room for an unconventional diffuser.
The longer you gaze at these renderings, the risk of getting conquered by the attention to detail increases (e.g., the motorsport-grade suspension visible up front).
This is not a mere digital dream, either. Sure, that is the status of the project for the time being, but who knows what the future might bring when Dom is the kind of guy who would chop up a 1927 Ford Coupe to give it a Honda K24 turbo-four and do the same to a Ford Edsel, only to give the later a 2JZ—check out the final part of his Insta post below for some updates on the pair of real-world builds.
