I took a trip to the long-neglected Cohort, and the first two shots stopped me right there. Something about the oversize tires on those steelies without wheel covers really change the look of this Pontiac. Like it put on rubber boots to go out in the mud, or something like that. And the rear fender skirt just accentuates its rather off-kilter appearance.(shot and posted by jmg3rd)
Quite the contrast from the one it was next to.
Now that’s more like it. Are these some of the finest wheel covers ever? Look at how deeply they’re dished. very sculptural. And they rear set off this exquisite ’64 Coupe DeVille. (Shot and posted by cjcz92)
Wide whites on anything past MY ’61 is one of my pet peeves, as is the case with the Caddy, but I would grudgingly admit that they “work” here.
Wheels and tires really do affect the look. Those wheel covers on that Caddy are works of art.
The rise and fall of whitewalls is really amazing. They went from being nearly ubiquitous in the ’50’s – ’80’s to practically disappearing by 1990. I find it fascinating that they could look so right on a sixties car and so wrong on anything today.
There isn’t even room for a white stripe anymore on the ultra-low-profile tires they use nowadays.
Whitewalls weren’t exactly ubiquitous by the ’80s. American cars, particularly early in the decade, still usually had whitewalls (especially Mopars where they were often standard equipment) but imports were almost always blackwall. Also, the car buff mags of the time *hated* whitewalls. For whatever reason, they considered blackwalls to be cool. Sporty or “Euro” versions of American cars in the ’80s almost always used blackwall tires to signify their sporty intentions.
It wasn’t easy to put whitewalls on your import even if you were buying replacement tires. Imports usually had 80 series tire (yes kids, they really did have 80 aspect ratio tires back then), with 70 series for sportier/upscale models, and both of those sizes were usually available in blackwall only. Detroiters usually used 75 series tires that were only available with whitewalls.
You remind me of another idea – the whitewall always served to visually enlarge the wheel and make the tire thinner. I think that today’s much larger wheels and much thinner tires sort of accomplish the same look, just in a different way. Whitewalls today would look odd, just like whitewalls never quite looked quite right on the cars before the balloon tire era.
When I switched from whitewalls to blackwalls on the set of tires I put on the ’97 Crown Vic, that was made quite clear. While it slightly modernized the look of the car, it made the relative dinkiness of the 15″ wheels quite clear as the whitewall had added extra visual interest.
Perhaps that changed later; I had 205/70R14 tires installed on my ’79 Malibu to get a bit more width over the stock 195/75 tires. They were of the variety that had a whitewall on one side only and didn’t want the whitewall so that was the side that faced in. This was in 1998 though.
How right you are Paul! Some things only look right with a certain look that comes with the right wheels. In high school I drove a ’70 Buick LeSabre. A 350 car, it got me everywhere without complaint, but I much preferred the addition of Buick’s styled chrome road wheels over the factory hubcaps.This would be in ’82-’83.
I put those hubcaps on my 92 Roadmaster. Look sharp!
And after
What a difference a wheel makes!
The styled road wheels give this humble LeSabre a Riviera vibe!
Thanks, they sure did! At one point in time you could pick them up reasonably, and they were one of the most pretty (although heavy) factory wheels out there. At least the 15 inch size, I never thought the 14’s on the Skylarks etc were quite as nice.
I have a friend who owns a ’64 Coupe de Ville. It was bought new by his uncle and he has restored it. I had a chance to go for a ride in it last fall – beautiful, gorgeous car! And the ride was surprisingly cloud-like! I had a good look around the interior and there was lots of real metal and chrome parts, very little plastic. The whole car had the look and feel of a quality automobile, the definition of what made GM the top player. No touch screen could compare to that!
Amazing how true wire and whites take a 80’s downsized Riviera and make it glam
Same is true of the ’78-’79 Seville Elegante – the real wires look terrific on this car.
Those wide whites and gold paint give the Caddie a really elegant look.
Maybe the Buick is the Cadillac owners winter beater!
Those wide whites and gold paint give the Caddie a really elegant look.
Maybe the Pontiac is the Cadillac owners winter beater!
Regarding the Caddy hubcaps, they were one of my favourite details on my ’64 Coupe DeVille, they really had a deep dish look!
This was from about ’83/’84. Still wish I had this one, it was beautiful!
Wheels are probably the fastest way to turn car’s looks around. Here’s a photo of the 2016 Astra when I collected it from the dealer- still with wheel covers:
And here it is one month later, having had the wheels changed (a “gift” from Opel Israel, I was sent to a tire shop to have them replaced). And notice those are just 16″:
That old Pontiac reminds me of an old man with dirty trousers and scuffed shoes! Older American cars look terrible when they are missing their hubcaps and the wheels and tires are dirty. I do miss the wide availability of affordable whitewall tires.
Those Cadillac wheel covers were heavy and difficult to install but they stayed on tightly (which was good because they were expensive) and looked so good. We had a 1963.
I agree on the quality of materials and assembly on the 1963-1964 Cadillac, too. There was a major decline in our 1966 and again in our 1971…in comparison they became “Big Chevies.”
The best wheels for an ’80 Bonnie are these–makes for a pretty good looking car.
+1
Agree 100%. Though even wire wheel covers or flat metal caps would look better than the dirty steelies and tall tires (what are those, 85 aspect?)
I digress. The ‘64 Caddy looks…okay. In fact, less than okay, it looks like a glammed pimpmobile. But I’m an OEM man. Did GM offer wide whites as an option? I’m thinking not. It also appears lowered, which I dislike. Standard stripe whitewalls and the factory wheels are the only thing that would look right on this magnificent ride. And the Pontiac initially pictured? I kinda like it, but it’d be even better without the skirts. It should be named, “Helga”.
On the matter of factory styled wheels versus wheel covers….when I was younger, I always preferred the styled wheels. Nowadays, and I don’t know why, but I’ve come to prefer the full wheel covers, and in many cases, even the poverty caps. I don’t know, I just prefer the utilitarian look. I’ve even come to like hooptie-mobiles. There’s something honest about them.
My guess is the Pontiac belongs to someone in a rural area that wanted a little more ground clearance and put some light duty truck tires on it.
Give the car a bath clean up the white letters on the tire and it might not look too bad for a farm car
Regarding the wide white sidewall look that was ubiquitous at one time, I ventured down that path only twice. Loved them at the time, am still ok nn it now. Mind you this was in the early to mid ’80’s, so cut me some slack! FWIW, there was NO drug use involved!
1966 Olds 98 Convertible
In the early to mid 80s wider whitewalls were in vogue so true wide whites weren’t so outrageous.
I remember that, how whitewalls became slightly wider around that time. Then they disappeared completely.
And this was the other, a 1964 Pontiac Acadian Sport Delux Convert. (yes, it was rare, and a Canadian thing, with buckets and console powerglide shift no less!)
I don’t know if wheel covers and proper tires would split the difference, I suspect if the conditions were reversed the Cadillac would still be prettier. Now granted, this is comparing a Pontiac and a Cadillac, but it amazes me how bad and chintzy trim got in a mere 16 years, which was unfortunately the only way Bill Mitchell seemed to see fit in differentiating his precious sheer look in the 80 Bs
On the Pontiac, it is amazing how fat even normal tires looked with no white wall or letters and a black steel wheel. Bigger tires have always made a car look more muscular.
On that Caddy nobody has mentioned that those wheelcovers could be so deeply recessed because the wheels themselves had an unusually deep offset.
On the sidewalls, the way I remember it they narrowed the first time in 1957 then again in 1962. Incorrect whitewalls are like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.
THIS is especially hideous – white walls on alloys….
Oh my… that’s.. well, horrifying. I wonder if the owner realizes how hideous this is. WOW!
I got caught between the wide and narrow whitewall fashion along with custom vs. muscle cars when I started driving in early 1964. My first car, a ’51 Chevy had blackwalls and fender skirts on it when we bought it. I immediately put on those fake “porta walls” and took off the skirts. The porta walls were of the wide variety and looked pretty good on the car, especially when I put Olds spinner hubcaps on it. The whole look was out of fashion by then. A year later I traded it for a ’55 Ford that had real wide whites and skirts. Off came the skirts and I had the white walls turned in and added the narrow porta walls and baby moons. I couldn’t afford a GTO or Mustang with red lines. Automotive fashions went through a big change in 1964.
I wonder if the demise of whitewall tires has to do with the dearth of chrome on new cars, as well as the wholesale switch to FWD. The former can be proven by how, even when whitewalls were in style, they didn’t look right on strippo cars that didn’t have kind of chrome moldings. When the moldings disappeared, as well as chrome bumpers, on ‘any’ model, regardless of position in a model line, whitewalls didn’t look right.
And then there’s the proliferation of FWD cars with wheels that severely reduced the depth of the wheel’s ‘dish’. Suddenly, wheels covers were entirely flush with the outside of the wheel, and they were limited to the low-line models, too. Higher trims got aluminum wheels which were just as flush with the tire.
Those two things combined seem to have eliminated any kind of tire decoration, whether it be a stripe or lettering. It didn’t hurt that it made making a tire cheaper, too.
It’s worth noting that, even in the whitewalls’ heyday, hotrodders liked to reverse them so the whitewall was on the ‘inside’.
I chalk it up to the attitude from the 70s and 80s on forward that whitewalls were “American” (translated to “for your parents”) while blackwalls were “European” (translated to modern and stylish”). I knew in 1993 that when my mother bought a Crown Victoria with blackwall tires that times were changing.
And because whitewalls certainly cost more to manufacture I doubt we will see them back any time soon.
And that today’s ultra-low-profile tires on ridiculously oversized wheels don’t leave room for any sidewall decor.
One could argue that the oversized wheels are a substitution, the rim bead on an 18″ or 19″ wheel ends pretty much where a whitewall would.
I remember in the late ’60s, when I was replacing one of the recaps on my ’59 Lincoln convertible (about one a week), the recap bodies would have the wide whites turned inside and replaced with narrow whitewalls painted on the outside, they had become so dated that even recaps hid them.
Also, the Lincoln Town Car offered narrow band whitewalls through its demise in 2011.
I was just thinking of those. Probably the only way you could put a whitewall on a 17+” wheel and not have it look absurd.
I wonder if you can even still get those?
Another interesting take on the white wall look is the wheels on the 1991-94 BMW M5.
Thanks Ed. That’s surprisingly OK looking. Not sure if it’s the thin whites somehow going with the lines of the car. Interesting.
Thin whites are the visual effect, but the execution is much more elaborate and thoroughly modern.
Here’s a better view