American Racing Custom Wheels Incorporate A Endowment Of Racing
At the dawn of the second half of the 20th century half the population of the USA lived in rural America and street racing had yet to even be named. Racing was something that occurred on tracks or backroads – not on city streets. On the west coast a new method of racing was being invented – a way to race within the confines of an urban environment. If you want an object lesson in how serving a niche within an American subculture is a great business model, look no further than the birth of American Racing custom wheels. Get American Racing Automotive Custom Wheels.
Cars were customized in home garages to perform in ways that original equipment manufacturers never intended. Machines took on mutated shapes that ranged from the muscular profile of a chopped Mercury to the spidery efficiency of the early dragsters. In 1956 three of those early innovators joined forces to design and build after-market car wheels for street racing.
Drag racing is the only racing style to have grown out of urban driving. The original Christmas tree that starts drag races was the standard three color stop light. The quarter mile drag race was not a variation on the track run by quarter horses – it was the distance from one stop light to another.
Demand for the wheels grew until the partners decided there was enough demand to justify a full blown after-market wheel business. Romeo and Jim, with engineer Tom Griffith founded American Racing Equipment. American Racing custom wheels broke into the mainstream in the early sixties with the introduction of the five-spoke American Racing ‘Torq Thrust’ wheel. The look of the wheel was attractive to non-racers, while the high performance was a hit with racers.
The radical shape of the spokes (’tapered parabolic’ in car design lingo) revolutionized wheel design. This breakthrough has long become standard in the industry, but American Wheel is still the company that the after-market industry and mainstream auto makers as well look to for the evolution of the automobile wheel.
American Racing custom wheels have since ascended into that pantheon where a product becomes a symbol for a life style: think Harley, Blackberry or Royal Dolton. Certain American Racing wheels are prized by collectors – most especially early Sixties Torq Thrust. Well, maybe not m-o-s-t especially. The absolute most valuable American Racing wheel is a broken Vector model owned by a collector in Sylmar, California, according to the American Racing website.
Remember The Dukes of Hazzard? Of course you do. Over the course of the series’ 147 episodes and 2 TV movies, Warner Brothers built 340 General Lees and each one was outfitted with American Racing custom wheels – Vectors being the wheel model Warner Brothers used. All but 19 of these ‘69 Chargers were totaled doing stunt jumps. Of the 1284 American Racing Vectors that were on those 319 totaled General Lees, only one Vector did not survive. And yes, it belongs to a collector.
American Racing Automotive Custom Wheels are familiar to people all around the world through the use of the American Racing Custom Wheels on cars that feature prominently film and television. From the quintessential 60’s car race movie Bullit, to the General Lee from the 70’s TV hit the Dukes of Hazzard, to the 90’s Die Harder with a Vengeance to the 21st century blockbuster the Fast and Furious and Transformers, American Racing custom wheels are an essential part of the look of American culture.
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