1967 Corvette with red stripe tires
Pencils down, everyone. Enough with the history lessons, time for some whitewall fun! The 1960s were a time of unprecedented cultural change, and that is reflected even in something as mundane as tires. While there was essentially only one style of whitewall tire in the 1950s, by the mid-60s manufacturers were going crazy with variation in sidewall stripe sizes, colors, and number.
As I did with my 1960s vinyl roof post a few years back, I’m going to try my best to catalog every variation, so buckle up.
As we saw last time in Part 3, in 1962 most manufacturers switched over from tires with a 2-3/4″ white sidewall tires to a 1″ white stripe (both numbers were slightly smaller for smaller tire sizes). But things didn’t stop there. Much like hemlines in the same time period, the white stripe quickly shrunk over the next several years, going to 1/2″, 3/8″, 5/16″, and even as small as a slender 1/8″. Let that sink in – over the course of just three years (from 1961 to 1964), white walls went from the entire sidewall to a thick stripe to a pencil thin stripe. Tire fashion was evolving rapidly.
Unlike body styling, which requires years of advance planning, tires are consumable items that are regularly replaced. Manufacturers took advantage of this fast-changing environment to slap the latest in tire fashions on their cars to generate interest. Some cars even had tires that were exclusive to a single model, as we shall see. Note that you may need to enlarge many of the sample photos below to the details of the tires.
1965 Pontiac GTO with 3/8″ red stripe tires
First up, the red stripe tire, perhaps the most iconic “whitewall” tire to come out of the 1960s. The look actually originated in Great Britain and was commonly seen on period Jaguars, Triumphs, and Austin-Healeys. In 1964, Pontiac offered red-line tires as an option on the GTO, becoming the first American car to offer them. The look proved popular and soon spread to performance models from every manufacturer.
1966 Chevrolet Corvette ad with gold stripe tires
In 1965, manufacturers started using these rapidly changing tire styles to offer specialized tires exclusive to a single brand or even a single model. Every car needs tires, so these exclusive specialty tires were an inexpensive way for automakers to add perceived value to their wares. Chevrolet offered gold-striped tires as an exclusive option on the Corvette starting in 1965. This option was available only for two years, through 1966. Such are the fickle winds of fashion.
1966 Plymouth Barracuda Brochure
In 1965 and 1966, Dodge and Plymouth offered Goodyear Blue Streak tires as an option on their high-performance models. This was not a heavily marketed option – I could not find a single period ad showing a car so equipped. The fuzzy image from the 1966 Barracuda brochure above was the best I could find.
Reproduction Goodyear Blue Streak tire. Photo courtesy Coker Tire.
Fortunately, Coker Tire makes reproductions of this incredibly rare bird, so we can get a better idea of what this tire looked like. Not only did the Blue Streak feature a single eponymous 3/8″ blue stripe, but it was also one of the first street tires to feature raised white letters, a look that wouldn’t become popular until the early 1970s. The look must have been too daring for even period Dodge and Plymouth customers – by 1967 they switched over to red stripe tires for their performance models, like everyone else.
1966 Ford Mustang brochure image. Enlarge to see twin red stripe tires on middle Mustang.
Also in 1965, Ford entered into an exclusive deal with US Royal Tires for dual red stripe tires for the Mustang. For 1965 and 1966 these tires were standard on 289 HP K-code Mustangs (optional on others). Again, I had a surprisingly hard time chasing one of these down, but if you enlarge and look closely at the image above, you can just make out the two red stripes on the fastback Mustang in the middle.
Reproduction Ford Mustang US Royal Dual Stripe tire. Photo courtesy Coker Tire.
Once again, Coker Tire comes to the rescue for is with a reproduction for us to get a better look.
1966 Ford Thunderbird brochure page. Enlarge to see red and white stripe tires.
But Ford wasn’t done with exclusive tire offerings. Also in 1965, Ford leveraged their close ties with Firestone to produce a version of Firestone Deluxe Champion tires with dual stripes (one red, one white) exclusively for the Ford Thunderbird. If you enlarge the ad above, you can just see them.
Ford Thunderbird red and white stripe Firestone tire
For a better look, here’s a picture I found on the interwebs of a Thunderbird sporting a 50+ year old NOS set of these Firestone tires (hopefully for show purposes only). These tires were offered as options on Ford Thunderbirds from 1965 through 1969, outlasting every other vehicle-exclusive tire options.
1969 Camaro ad
By 1969, red stripe tires were pretty much on their way out, which is unfortunate because I’ve always liked the look and red is my favorite color. Stepping up to indicate high-performance tires were raised white letters, which would be the new signifier of high-performance tires for the next decade or two, until they were taken over by truck and offroad tires. But we are here to talk about whitewalls, not white letters, which will undoubtedly be covered in a future post.
Be sure to read Part 5 for the exciting conclusion to this series! (Spoiler alert – things don’t end well for whitewall tires).
Full Series
Automotive History – The History of Whitewall Tires, Part 1: The Teens and Twenties
Automotive History – The History of Whitewall Tires, Part 2: 1920s and 1930s
Automotive History – The History of Whitewall Tires, Part 4: 1964 through 1969 – The Wild ’60s
Automotive History – The History of Whitewall Tires, Part 5: 1970s through 1990s – The Long Goodbye
The stripes kept growing also, I remember three and four stripe tires rolling out….
When I was a kid I had a bike with red stripe tires. It was beautiful!
I recall painting the letters white on my Ten-Speed bike tires in high school. Pretty groovy!
I had a ’69 Schwinn Pea Picker with a green line rear tire.
So many memories .
-Nate
Thanks for the interesting set of articles. The pictures in this part remind me of the song SS396 by Paul Revere and the Raiders.
“On the redline tires she sits real mean
She’s the coolest hot one… you’ve ever seen”
Will John marry Jane? Who will be the Belle of the Ball? Will it be colored stripe tires or Raised White letters? Tune in tomorrow for another episode of Sex, Tires and The Sporty Car! You are terrific. I am enjoying these articles very much. Thanks for giving your time and literary talents to this subject. Tom
> Tune in tomorrow for another episode of Sex, Tires and The Sporty Car!
Sex sells everything – well everything but tires surely. Tires are too mundane to even try to make sexy, right? Wrong!
more…
still more…
and we can’t forget Pirelli of course…
This is the era when I was an avid car-magazine reader and brochure-devourer, though not quite yet a driver. I remember the red-stripe tires, but the rest is news (or long-forgotten) to me—thanks for today’s education, and for your work behind it all!
Regarding white letters, the 1966 Shelby GT 350 was an early user of these.
https://www.lov2xlr8.no/brochures/ford/66gth/bilder/2.jpg
The Plymouth ad is odd. Caliper style disc brakes? versus what? Husky 273 engine? The engine is over weight? A “Readable tach” ? Nah, I want the non-readable version. Wheel covers that simulate bolt on wheels? Aren’t all wheels bolt on?
And apparently only rally drivers need “stable, predictable” brakes. Everyone else it seems can get by with the unstable, unpredictable brakes.
And did anyone outside CarBrochureLand ever call an ashtray an “ash receiver”?
> Caliper style disc brakes? versus what?
These, perhaps? https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/1950-chrysler-crown-imperial-four-wheel-disc-brakes-standard-but-not-like-modern-discs/
If the 273 was “big and husky” what hyperbole was left for Plymouth to use for the 383, 426 Hemi or the 440? 😉
If I owned an Epsilon platform Impala, I’d have to install the Vogue tires. On the way to work one day, I spotted a very dark blue one with very nice looking wheels and those tires.
They have an interesting look. A wider white stripe with a very narrow yellow stripe. Even on the low profile rims that this Impala was sporting, they looked really nice.
I’m sure it will come up in the next segment, but for those wanting to pimp-out their ‘Deuce and a Quarter’ (seventies’ Buick Electra 225), the only way to go were ‘Trues and Vogues’ (True Spoke rims and Vogue tires) with the latter having the above white and gold stripe sidewalls.
Always liked the red stripe tires on sporty cars. And narrow white stripes on most others. What I don’t like is when modern people put white letter tires on old classic cars (full sizers) when they never came that way from the factory. Full-size cars had the option of white stripe tires or BW tires.
When I was a kid, *every* Hot Wheels car had redline tires. Not sure when they stopped but I know new ones have simple blackwalls (why not? Hot Wheels have gotten so cheaped out over trhe years; the biggest blow being when they dropped the metalic firemist paint – can’t remember the official name – for plain non-reflective enamel).
So was the sudden change to narrow white stripes in 1962 driven by the tire industry, or did the car manufacturers tell the tire manufacturers “we’re sick of wide whitewalls, how about something new?”
In researching this series, I never did find a good answer about the chicken and egg of the white stripe tire switchover in 1962.
Either way, it requires the coordination of multiple entities normally not known for cooperating on non-regulatory matters (either competing auto manufacturers working together, or competing tire manufacturers working together).
As I’ve shown in my previous post, white stripe tires were already in the ether, having been around since at least the late ’50s. It could have just been a confluence of events.
I like whitewalls. The narrow ones, in particular, add a touch of class.
The strangest tires I’ve ever seen were 1970’s Metzeler Blue Blizzards. An early studless snow tire, their tread was a dark blue. They were rare, perhaps too radical or possibly they did not work as well as advertised, but they were certainly noticeable.
I had these on my car in 1975, but I could not remember the brand name. They were odd looking, but as I remember their performance was OK. Thanks for mentioning the name. It was really bugging me that I could not remember it. At the time I wondered if the blue tread was just for advertising or if it actually helped the performance.
As to the blue stripe on not catching on, whitewall tires are shipped with a protective coating that covers the whitewall. It keeps the white rubber clean and washes off with a little water. That protective coating has a blueish color to it. I would imagine that the owner of a car with blue stripe tires would always be being asked “Did you get new tires?”
“Bluing” was used to keep the whitewalls bright white. Bluing was also used to launder white linens and shirts and added to white paint. I only knew of this as periphery knowledge and didn’t pursue it, until now. Thanks to Wikipedia, the basics are explained to satisfaction:
“White fabrics acquire a slight color cast after use (usually grey or yellow). Since blue and yellow are complementary colors in the subtractive color model of color perception, adding a trace of blue color to the slightly off-white color of these fabrics makes them appear whiter.”
Wikipedia goes on to explain why women with grey hair appear to be tinted blue, which I was curious about, but really didn’t want to know.
They can’t been seen in any of the b/w photos I have (hope one day to find a color one in so many boxes of family photos), but our 1965 Thunderbird had those dual red/white striped tires when we bought it lightly used in 1967. The original owner had ordered them with the car and liked them so much that he put a new set on shortly before he traded the car in and we bought it. Thanks for including information on them.
So many tire choices during the 1960s-70s. I have issues with so many autos shown today with white-letter tires…not back in the day. I was a teenager back in late 1960s, worked at a drive-in theater near Fort Bragg / Pope AFB. So many muscle cars were ridding on whitewalls and not white-letter tires. I bought a new 1970 Nova SS, 396, and it came from factory with whitewall tires.
Thanks for showing the 1965-66 Thunderbird red-band whitewall tires. To my knowledge these tires were only an option on 1965-66 T-Birds. My 1966 yellow T-Bird convertible came with the option red-band whitewalls, per its window sticker and build sheet. Only one company makes these reproduction tires and I am happy with the tires on my 1966 Bird.
I’ve been hangin’ around gas stations…
I’ve been learnin’ ’bout tires…
I’ve been talkin’ to grease monkeys…
I’ve been workin’ on cars…
I enjoyed my time as a pump jockey in a large service station with only three pumps .
-Nate
Miss those days. As a kid, I used to love as the gas jockey moved around my dad’s Ranch Wagon, washing all the windows. I’d always smile at him.
I miss ’em too and not just the horny housewives / tramps that would come in for full service not wearing any panties and make sure I got an eyeful as I was scrubbing the glass .
Or the two tarts in tube tops and short shorts who rolled in in a Triumph Roadster and said they’d give me all the leg I could handle if I fixed the electrics on their car or……
You get the picture .
Cars falling off the hoist, ‘wiping the dust’ off rude jerks shiny cars with a brake fluid soaked rag, on and on .
-Nate
The 67 Shelby had white letter tires and I had seen them. So when my father got the 68 Cougar, with Goodyear Wide Oval WW tires, I knew what I had to do. Fortunately they were the Wide Ovals also used on the Shelby maybe in a slightly different size. Who cares as I was 14 and being a teenage knew exactly how things should look. Haven’t we all thought we knew better than Dad when it came to cars. Listening to Paul’s early years that sounds like the case. So I got out my paint brush and a bottle of white paint and went to work. Below a true original tire from 1968 with the white painted letters still visible.
Bob Reisner’s Panthermobile had pink stripe tyres.
Just thought I’d add that factoid…
While our ’65 Impala wagon came with optional whitewalls, it had dog dish hubcaps, as the full wheel covers were also an option. Dad bought it off the lot, not special order. After the tires wore out, he went to Sears for replacements, heavier duty, but they only had them in blackwall. The look was good with the dog dishes, and slightly wider rims and tires than on sedans.
White wall, red line, blue streak…
I just completed a very disappointing internet search. No hits.
I was certain that I’d seen bicycle tires in a variety of colors–not just the sidewall, but the entire tire in pastel colors, back in the late ’60s, early-to-mid ’70s. I’m thinking the primary (perhaps only) market was for the “Stingray”-style bikes; 20″ tires.
What my search found was modern, currently-produced colored bicycle tires in vibrant hues for many different tire sizes.