For more than 60 years, bright metal wheel covers have been fashionable for covering ugly but functional automotive wheels. Now that fad in design seems to be changing radically. The last couple of years, black and occasionally gray wheel covers have begun showing up, mostly I observe as aftermarket items on low-line imports from Volkswagen and Honda. At the VW dealership in Troy, Michigan, a rack of Goodyear Eagles mounted on oversized custom wheels are displayed. Usually it is black wheels on a black car, the latest attempt at personalization on mass market vehicles.
Now black wheels are beginning to show up on family vehicles such as a Chevy Impala and a Dodge Durango in my neighborhood. In addition, Ford offers black wheels as options on a variety of 2014 models.
But where will it go from black? First, will black wheels become more common? Second, will other colored wheels appear?
I do not know the answer to the first question, but as to the second, they’re already here! Today I spotted a bright blue Nissan with fire engine red wheels darting in and out of traffic on a Detroit area Interstate. The small sedan, perhaps a Versa (I could never get close enough to tell) also sported a huge, Daytona-type aftermarket spoiler on the rear deck, indicating the car was somewhat owner-customized.
How long will it be before we see yellow, green, purple, orange and pink wheels –hopefully color-coordinated to body colors, either monochromatic like the black-on-blacks or dazzling contrasts? Time will tell if it has not already arrived in some corner of the automotive world.
My earliest car memory is my family’s 1935 Ford Fordor, the body colored dark blue with red wire wheels. I was told my older sister got to choose the contrasting color scheme, which I recall vaguely as very attractive.
The next year, Ford discontinued wire wheels and went to stamped steel “artillery wheels” in the body colors, and that was the end of choosing separate colors for wheels. Bright metal trim rings then showed up as options or series differentiators, and after WW2, Chrysler products first had white plastic wheel covers and then bright metal, stamped steel wheel covers. This lasted until recent years, when the fad became forged or cast wheels showing the hefty spokes. Now they are painting them flat or glossy black and sometimes flat gray.
But why not other wheel colors, like Fords and other makes of the early 1930s when yellow wheels, for instance, were quite common? I asked a couple of retired automotive designers who, unfortunately, offered no opinions on the matter.
It will be interesting to see how this fad rolls out.
