American Racing Custom Wheels Assure Success On The Racing Circuit
Custom after-market car wheels from American Racing are a great example of how seeing and servicing a niche within an American subculture can evolve into a mainstream business. The subculture we are talking about here is the California car culture that spawned drag racing, funny cars and street racing. The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean and others immortalized the culture in song while pop culture’s Dickens, Tom Wolfe, chronicled it in his book The Tangerine Flake Cream Colored Baby. American Racing custom wheels are an object lesson in how to become a cultural icon. Get American Racing SUV Custom Wheels.
The drag race was a creation of popular culture. It did not come out of boardrooms or marketing plans - it was a creation of the street. Two of the sports’ early stars were San Francisco machine shop owner Jim Ellison and partner and drag racer Romeo Palamides.
Between them, these two invented the mag wheel. Using spoked magnesium wheels with a strength to weight ratio unheard of in any other automobile wheel format, they revolutionized drag racing, first, and American car wheel design second.
Once Romeo began cruising and bruising the local streets and strips in his revolutionary mags, word quickly spread among street racing enthusiasts. Other racers begged Jim and Romeo to make mags for them. Demand was so relentless that it became clear a profitable business could be made designing, manufacturing and selling after-market wheels for street and drag racing and American Racing Equipment was incorporated by Romeo, Jim and design engineer Tom Griffith in 1956. The company was serviced the street racing subculture until the early Sixties, when the famous Torq Thrust wheel took the company mainstream.
The Torq Thrust is widely credited with creating the after-market car wheel. The 5-spoke ‘tapered parabolic’ design kept brakes cooler while the muscular look made the driver look cooler. Suddenly drivers who had no intention to drag race wanted American Racing wheels for their car. With them, even Mom’s ‘57 Bel-Air looked like a muscle car.
American Racing custom wheels have, in many ways, transcended the automotive culture to take a place along side other pop culture icons like the Winchester, the Harley, and the Blackberry. Did you know there are people who collect car wheels? I guess it’s not surprising, considering everything else that gets collected. In any case, original ‘Torq Thrust’ wheels are highly prized by collectors. But no American muscle car wheel is as highly prized as one particular broken American Racing Vector wheel.
Where did this collector’s item come from and why is it so sought after? The answer to that question shows both the quality of American Racing custom wheels and the company’s penetration into pop culture.
Appearances by American Racing Car Custom Wheels are common in the movies. Film directors love the powerful look American Racing SUV Custom Wheels give to any vehicle and stunt men love the dependability and strength. You can see American Racing custom wheels in the seminal car chase movie Bullit, both Dukes of Hazzard theatrical release movies, The Game, Die Hard With A Vengeance, The Fast and Furious franchise and last summer’s blockbuster Transformers.
Add comment June 29th, 2009