Wheels: What Goes Around, Comes Around

Filed in archive As We See Things on November 13, 2007

Harley Ferguson is a long-time cyber-friend, beginning when I was editor of About.com's cars site. As he now lives in Tokyo and my home is several thousand miles across the Pacific, it's probable that we'll never meet in person. Nevertheless Harley supports Classical Drives with frequent comments and helpful encouragement. He's just e-mailed me a short but amusing piece on the evolution of the wheel that I think you'll enjoy reading. Incidentally, I'm not fond of those massive alloy wheels on some contemporary automobiles; they'd look more at home on a steam engine. Ditto the huge grilles and blunt front ends; continuing the railway analogy, they remind me of a late 1930's Santa Fe diesel locomotive. When it comes to car design, we are definitely not living in an age of elegance.

Here's Harley Ferguson's Commentary:
When I was a kid, there weren't any new cars being built so there were still lots of old cars on the road. The oldest ones had large (about 19" or so) diameter wheels with heavy wooden spokes. Slightly newer cars wore wire spoke wheels of a lesser diameter. Still newer models had 16" pressed steel wheels with small hubcaps. When production began again 16" steel wheels were pretty well standard, but hubcaps were growing into full-size wheel covers, some made to look like the old wire spoke wheels. In the 50's wheel sizes on full-size passenger cars shrank to 14" or 15" and pressed steel wheels were replaced with light metal wheels (aluminum, magnesium, etc.) by younger drivers, then became original equipment on some cars. Wheels stayed around 14-15" for quite a while, both pressed steel and light metal, but rim width increased and total tire diameter decreased. When the very low profile tires became popular, wheel sizes started to increase to maintain total diameter and to provide room for larger brake surfaces: 16-17", even 18-inchers. Yesterday I saw a new Lexus with 18" ten-spoke wheels. The spokes aren't wood, but wheels have definitely come full circle.

[Photo: Philip Powell]