1973 Imperial brochure
While the 1960s were a time of extreme experimentation in tire sidewall technology (among other things), most of the variations on the classic single white stripe had a short shelf life – only two or three years in most cases.
However, as the 1970s dawned, there was one last whitewall stripe variation that I didn’t cover in my previous post: Double (and triple) stripe whitewalls. While both looks were birthed in the 1960s, they would come to be associated with the early ’70s.
As we saw in Part 4, Ford experimented with multiple stripes as early as 1965 with their tire manufacturers, but they were always colored (either two red stripes, or a red and a white stripe). For today’s final installment, we are going to look at the final whitewall tire variations – multiple white stripes.
Three Stripe Whitewall Tires
Let’s first cover three-stripe white wall tires, an uncommon rarity that came and went before twin-stripes burst onto the scene in 1970. As before, you will need to enlarge many of the photos below to see the detail of the tire sidewalls.
1968 Imperial ad showing three-stripe tires
From 1966 through 1968, Imperial was available with three-stripe white wall tires. These were a $55 option at the time and comprised of two wide outer strips surrounding a third narrow white stripe. They don’t photograph well – the 1968 Imperial ad above was the best photo I could find, and you still have to enlarge it and look closely to see the third thin middle stripe.
1969 Lincoln Continental ad with three-stripe whitewall tires
Lincoln offered a set of three-stripe radial whitewalls exclusively as a one-year-only option in 1969. The stripes were the opposite of the Imperial configuration: two narrow outer stripes surrounding a wider inner stripe. These were usually seen on the Mark III, but as the photo above confirms, they were also offered on the Continental sedan that year. By 1970, the triple stripe whitewall tire was dead (at least to OEMs), having never escaped its luxury car niche.
Two Stripe Whitewall Tires
1969 Chevrolet Caprice with two-stripe whitewall tires.
While three-stripe whitewall tires were a flash in the pan, two-stripe whitewall tires would prove to be a much more popular (if no more durable) fad. Twin-white stripe tires first appeared as an exclusive option on the 1969 Chevrolet Caprice. No other car from any other GM division or manufacturer featured two-stripe whitewall tires in 1969, as near as I can tell.
1970 Chevrolet Camaro with two-stripe whitewall tires
For 1970, however, two stripe whitewalls exploded. Virtually every car from GM, Ford, and Chrysler in 1970 and 1971 was depicted wearing double stripes in their marketing materials. Even pony cars, like the 1970 Camaro pictures above, were not immune to the lure of the double stripe.
1971 AMC Ambassador ad
AMC was not immune to the wiles of the double stripe whitewall tire either. Again, I have no idea how various auto and tire manufacturers all colluded together to decide that two-stripe whitewall tires were suddenly a thing.
1970 Imperial ad – One thin and one thick white stripe (enlarge to see detail)
Most of the twin-stripe tires featured two 3/8″ stripes of the same size. A few, like Cadillac and Imperial, sported twin-stripe tires with one thin and one thick stripe, seen best in the 1970 Imperial ad above.
However they came about, twin stripe whitewall tires were not long for the world. By 1971, after just one year Cadillac and Lincoln were already done with two-stripes, having switched back to single-stripe tires.
1973 Imperial ad showing two-stripe whitewall tires.
And then in 1972, just as quickly as they had burst onto the scene in 1970, the double stripe whitewall tires were gone. For 1972, every automaker had switched back to the classic 3/4” or 7/8” single stripe whitewall tire, a look that would remain durable for the next several decades. All except for one, that is. Imperial was the lone double-stripe holdout, featuring twin-stripe whitewall tires through 1973.
It is not hard to see why multi-stripe tires never took off. To me, they look busy (especially the three-stripe variants) and like a bullseye they draw your eyes away from the car and towards the tire, which is not where auto designers want your gaze to be drawn.
1988 Chrysler New Yorker with double-stripe whitewall tires.
Double stripe whitewalls would make one last brief OEM return at Chrysler in 1988. The 1988-1992 Chrysler C-Bodies (the Dodge Dynasty and Chrysler New Yorker) were sold with double-stripe whitewalls (one thick, one thin). My father owned a 1988 Dodge Dynasty, and I distinctly recall the very unusual (for the time) two-stripe whitewall tires.
The Decline of Whitewall Tires
1974 Corvette – last Corvette advertised with whitewall tires.
Of course, by the early 1970’s, whitewall tires were peaking in popularity and would begin their long, slow decline. Sports cars would be the first to ditch the white sidewall look: The last Corvette to be pictured by GM wearing whitewall tires was in 1974. It wouldn’t take long for other cars and entire brands to start ditching whitewall tires altogether, as we shall see.
1981 Chevrolet Camaro brochure page
The last Camaro advertised by Chevrolet with whitewall tires was in 1981.
1983 Ford Mustang ad
The last depiction I could find of a Mustang with whitewall tires by Ford was in 1983. It seems weird seeing Fox body Mustangs with whitewall tires: As I recall, most were sold with blackwalls or raised white letter tires.
1982 Cadillac Cimarron
Cracks in the whitewall wall were beginning to form even at luxury automakers. The first Cadillac since the early 1950s to be advertised without whitewall tires was the 1982 Cimarron. We all like to rag on the Cimarron, and for good reason, but it did open the door ever so slightly for future Cadillacs with blackwall tires, a manual transmission, no vinyl roof, and no wire wheel covers.
Lincoln’s first modern car advertised with blackwall tires was the 1984 Mark VII LSC (although plenty of lesser Mark VIIs were still sold with whitewalls).
Chrysler was one of the last whitewall holdouts – their first modern car with blackwalls wouldn’t appear until 1985 with the introduction of the LeBaron GTS. But clearly the winds of change were picking up.
1989 Pontiac Safari Wagon
Not surprisingly, Pontiac was the first US brand to ditch whitewall tires completely. The last vehicle to appear in their brochures so equipped was the 1989 Safari wagon, which is a lot longer than I recall the Safari wagon sticking around. They tried their best to make it look exciting in the photo above, but really there is only so much you can do with a GM B-body wagon.
1991 Ford LTD brochure – Last Ford shown with whitewalls
The last year Ford depicted whitewall tires in their brochure was in 1991, the final year for the LTD. While I’m sure plenty of 1992 and later EN53 Crown Victorias were sold with whitewall tires, they were always depicted in their brochures by Ford wearing blackwalls, so I’m sticking with 1991 per my rules of using ads and brochures.
Not surprisingly, whitewall tires followed a very similar trajectory to their broughamtastic sibling, the vinyl roof. Many the final cars with whitewall tires are the very same final cars to sport vinyl roofs.
Chrysler, always a bastion of whitewalls, depicted their last whitewall-equipped vehicle in 1994 – The Lebaron Sedan. The picture above appears to be the sole promotional picture of this car and was the same photo I used in my vinyl roof history a few years back.
1996 Caprice Classic Wagon
In 1996, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and Buick all said farewell to whitewall tires (and vinyl roofs) with the departure of the full-sized Fleetwood, Caprice Classic, and Roadmaster (respectively). I’m fairly certain these are also the last wagons to have fake wood on the side, but that is a topic for another post.
2009 Mercury Grand Marquis with whitewall tires, parked front of a marquee. Get it?
This left Lincoln and Mercury as the last brands still depicting their cars with whitewall tires. The last Mercury Grand Marquis with whitewalls appeared in 2009.
2010 Lincoln brochure
Lincoln would hold out one more year, last depicting whitewall tires in their brochure in 2010, well within living memory of the readers of this site.
To be clear, the 2010 Lincoln Town Car wasn’t the last new car to be sold with whitewall tires – it was merely the last to be depicted with them by the manufacturer. Dealers swap out wheels and tires all the time and will happily add a set of whitewall tires to your new Cadillac CT5 today. An impressive run for something that offered no functional benefit.
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
From 1968 until 1970 General Motors Holden (GMH) in Australia equipped its passenger car range as follows:
1968 through 1970
Chevrolet Impala Sport Sedan – triple band white side wall tyres
Chevrolet Impala 4 door Sedan – triple band white side wall tyres
Pontiac Parisienne Sport Sedan – triple band white side wall tyres
Holden Brougham – double band white wall tyres
Holden Premier – single band white wall tyres
Lesser Holden models had black wall tyres
Now, the Chevrolet & Pontiac passenger cars were twice as expensive as the cheaper working class Holdens, and were the GMH luxury flagship cars, so it follows that triple band white wall were only used on top of line Chevrolet and Pontiac.
The Holden Brougham was much cheaper at only half the price of the Chevrolet or Pontiac but it was more expensive than a Holden Premier so the Brougham had double band white walls, which left the Holden Premier with just single band white walls. Holdens cheaper than a Premier came with black wall tires.
Basically, from 1968 to 1970, the more money you spent on a car from GMH, the more white bands the tires had.
Presumably, then, if one was able to wrangle a full-import Caddy from a willing Holden dealer, it came with so many bands on the tire that they started spinning over onto the tread.
Chrysler also offered wide white stripe tires, with gold stripe accents, on the 1979 New Yorker Fifth Avenue. A proper gangster look. Lincoln offering a double stripe tire at the time as well.
Wow, I never knew any manufacturer offered “Vogue” style whitewall tires as original equipment.
Agreed, no kidding! I remember finding it quite an unusual 1930s neo-classic look as a little kid, but I knew Chrysler was aiming for every conceivable luxury touch at the time. I do remember the Fifth Avenue Editions generally having those tires until about 1981 or so. When it was then time, for owners to get replacement tires. And those wide whitewalls became an artifact of that late ’70s snapshot in time. Replaced going forward, by more conventional white stripped tires.
“Gangster” whitewalls.
Brings to mind the Curtis Mayfield song “Be Thankful For What You Got”
“Though you may not drive a great big Cadillac
Gangsta whitewalls
TV antennas in the back
You may not have a car at all
But remember brothers and sisters
You can still stand tall”
Very interesting read. I remember a time when when people had their white-wall tires installed with the white walls facing inward. And of course when white-lettered tires were all the rage. Spiritual successor?
Paul had commented in one of the earlier articles that he’d had whitewalls mounted inside-out at one point. That immediately brought back memories of when my father debated doing the same thing.
In 1984, dad bought a Plymouth Voyager, and immediately had the tires replaced with Goodyear Eagle GT’s (he was adamant the the original-equipment tires were “junk”). I can’t recall if Eagle GTs weren’t available as blackwalls, or whether the shop just ordered white-letter tires by mistake, but in any case, that’s what came in.
Dad was mad about that, because he didn’t see the point in advertising to the world what kind of tires he had. He considered having them mounted inside-out, but eventually relented and mounted them regularly. White-letter Eagle GTs on a woodgrain-sided minivan with wire hubcaps were an odd combination. Oh, and it was my job as a kid to keep the white letters clean – I remember scrubbing away with whitewall tire cleaner.
Wow. That would be different combination! I had to keep our family’s white walls clean as a kid. I figured out that, for whatever reason, Simple Green worked best for the task.
For me it was Westley’s Bleche-Wite. It’s amusing that the bottle for this product still pictured a 1950s-era car in the 1980s – and probably beyond.
Bleche-Wite for the win. My brother and I used to always pronounce it like “bleck white”
They still make it, but the 50s car on the bottle is long gone.
I always went with the ‘bletch-white’ pronunciation.
When JPC mentioned this product the other day, I can honestly say that I have NEVER heard of Bleche Wite. As always, you learn something new every day here at CC.
For me, I used to use Comet or Ajax, until Soft Scrub came out and I used that product exclusively until the end of the Great White Wall Epoch™.
As I mentioned the other day, that stuff works great on bathrooms too, as I found out after recently rediscovering it after a few decades.
When JPC mentioned this stuff the other day, I just had to look it up, and it is now a “Black Magic” tire care product, which just going by that name seems to be a bit of an oxymoron.
Interesting (but not surprising) it’s now billed simply as a “tire cleaner”, not a whitewall cleaner. There likely aren’t enough whitewall (or even white letter) tires around to support a product solely designed to clean them.
We always used SOS pads, took one from Mom’s supply under the kitchen sink and kept it by the laundry tub in the garage. Worked pretty well.
This was a very enjoyable series – I enjoyed reading about all the intricacies of whitewall tires… something I’d rarely given thought to before.
It’s now so uncommon to see cars with whitewalls, that I take extra notice of them. The most unusual vehicle I’ve seen recently is this Geo Metro that I spotted last year. I’d love to know just what brand of tires these were:
A!ways been a fan of white walls on most anything… They just set off that formal look… From an mga to a Lincoln continental… A touch of class. Here’s my 69 dart gt I bought at a local junkyard and drove for five years after adjusting the slant six lifters.. Got the radial White walls on clearance at monkey wards
Even Willys followed the trend. Ads for the wagon and Jeepster showed whitewalls starting in 1949, then switched to stripes in ’65, then vanished in 1990.
South Korea was the last holdout for whitewalls on non-luxury cars AFAIK.
I was seeing them regularly into the late 90s
Another example.
Interesting, as S.Korean tire manufacturer Hankook is one of the last mainstream tire manufacturers offering whitewalls in some sizes.
Yet another.
1984 Renault 9 Avenue:
With colors
Another trend was the appearance of wider white stripe tires around 1979-80. I recall these mostly on full size GM cars, but my mother had a 1983 Citation that came with them. Chrysler shows a mix of wide and narrow stripes starting in 1979, and the 1980 LTD brochure shows both types.
I recall that slight widening too, it seemed to correlate with the move away from that odd tire sizing used on American cars in the ’70s like GR-78-15. These were replaced by metric sizes like P215-75R15, with 75 aspect ratio tires sized to fit American cars and were usually only available in whitewalls, whereas many 70 and 80 series tires only fit imports and were blackwall only, making it difficult to change sidewall style even when buying replacement tires.
Looking at all these adverts makes me sad for the Gear Heads that came of age after ~ they’ll never fully grasp the magnificence of those wonderful HUGE American Land Yachts .
The Camaro picture with the smiling children too, is funny because obviously they’ve not yet been imprisoned in the cramped back seat .
-Nate
(who loves little cars I can put on like a pair of gloves but also knows a good thing when I see it)
Thanks for tracking down all this info and the photos—I hardly remember all those variants, just gradually getting to the point where a blackwall car didn’t look “cheap” or underdressed, etc.
Here’s a little industry data (Popular Mechanics, Feb. 1991) as things tapered off:
Thanks, George. I found stats like this difficult to come by when researching this series. You always have a knack for coming up with old press clippings!
BTW : This cannot be the end because you’ve not yet touched on those weird colored trad tires in the 1980’s & 1990’s .
-Nate
A lot of fashion trends come and go, but I suspect with the modern low profile tires, whitewalls will never make a resurgence. Even the raised white letters on off-pavement tires are fading away … some sizes of the iconic BFG AllTerrains and MudTerrains in their no longer offer RWL. Some of these are available as low as 50 aspect ratio. I assume there just isn’t enough sidewall room.
Exactly. The whole ‘double-dub’ thing with the large diameter wheels and incredibly narrow sidewall tires simply wouldn’t allow enough space to get any kind of stripe onto the tire.
I can’t really imagine there ever being a return to tires with large sidewalls, either (despite how much better they ride).
One of the fallacies I read often about the downfall of whitewall tires is that modern low-profile tires don’t have room for a white stripe. But whitewalls fell out of favor well before ultra-low-profile tires became popular. In the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, the American car buff magazines HATED whitewalls, and considered them dorky. It was not uncommon in this period for the top-line model (often with a sporty/European-style bent) to have blackwalls and the base model whitewalls. The American auto press held a similar view towards velour upholstery (especially in red), woodgrain interior trim, chrome highlights inside or out, stand-up hood ornaments, vinyl roofs, and opera windows/lights. Irony being many actually European cars used these features, including wood paneling, chrome exterior trim especially in the window and grille area, whitewalls, and (on Benzes and Jags) hood ornaments. Flat black paint everywhere was considered European-style when applied to American cars, though few actual European cars used it. I don’t get the feeling that the general populace minded whitewalls one bit.
One wonders that with the increasingly difficult-to-differentiate car designs, stylists will turn to whitewalls or greenwalls or other features like that once more. Granted, the sidewalls are thin nowadays, but designers can be creative.
To me nothing sets a brougham era car off like whitewalls. Seeing those cars in black walls to me is just sad. Cars of the 50’s would be included in that lot. I never cared for the whites on sport cars though.
“By 1998, Lincoln too would be all blackwall, closing an era that had started roughly 70 years earlier. “
Not so. My parents 2002 Lincoln Town Car came new with Michelin narrow stripe whitewalls. From Lincoln brochures, it looks like they were available on the Town Car until at least 2006.
Fixed. Lincoln actually offered them through 2010.
I don’t know if it was ever original equipment, but I distinctly remember seeing a tire with an intricate interlocking-square whitewall design in the early ’70s, typicically fitted to Mark IVs, Imperials, and the like. Anyone else recall these or know who made them?
I remember that, but couldn’t say which manufacturer.
I have one of the last gm cars that came with whitewalls: a 99 buick lesabre. Mine are the 7/8 inch style and they really make the car look nice. I have had many compliments on it over the years and thats partly because of those tires. Whitewalls were also available on the cadillac deville and oldsmobile eighty eight through ’99.
Whitewall width seemed to go all over the map in the 70s-early 80s. My father’s 72 Mark IV had super-thin single whitewalls. I also remember the very short-lived wider whitewall that was seen around 1980-81. I really liked the look on more traditional cars, but both traditional cars and wider whitewalls died quickly.
Most of the ones I ever bought were right around an inch, maybe a touch under.
This has been a fun series.
Looking at this picture of my 72 Maverick LDO when it was new, I see the same super-thin whitewalls of your father’s Mark IV.
As a lifetime buyer of only white wall tires, (I totally refuse to buy a common black wall tire). I recently found myself searching for white walls for our 2017 WN Series II Holden Caprice. Our ‘17 Caprice has 19 inch tires and of course can only accept a narrow white wall band. However finding such a tire, particularly in Australia presents quite a challenge.
However, after searching, I discovered that there is a real option. Not well promoted, but available are white wall rubber strips that are available in a variety of widths. These white wall strips permanently glue, and I mean ‘permanently’ attach to black wall tires.
I have had two sets of these ‘stick on white walls’ and they are outstanding. Once fitted, they look exactly like factory white walls. They work very well on my 2017 Caprice.
In the end, the white wall width is determined by the available tire side wall width, but I will always argue that white wall tires in the correct width improve any vehicle, be it a sports car, passenger car, SUV or truck.
As for tire side wall cleaning. White and black wall tires need the exact same cleaning methods. Common tire dressings and tire black do not clean tire side walls, these products simply cover over the dirt. They are the lazy tire cleaners choice.
Long live the White Side Wall Tire!!!
If it has chrome bumpers and a split bench seat it needs white walls. If it has bucket seats and chrome bumpers, raised white letters. This has been my personal preference for the last 50 years. My brother bought a 1972 Cutlass Supreme Convertible as a gift to me. It has a mild cam, headers, raised white letter tires and a 442 bumper with dual exhaust. Great right? alas it has a split bench seat. So I will make it run quieter, pull the raised white letter tires and replace them with a 1.5in white wall so it will match my expectations. Then I will buy a Cutlass S with buckets. Rough having OCD.
Late 1969, Dad borrowed and wrecked my T-Bird. Only had one day to buy a new car before returning to college. Dad gave me a blank check and told to see his friend at the Chevy dealer. I was told buy something practical, meaning not a Camaro. On the lot I picked out I picked out a fully optioned 1970, 396 Nova SS, without vinyl top. It had whitewalls and all the chrome trim similar to the 1970 Brochure. Dad thought I was practical getting a Nova, until he received the insurance bill but I was long gone back to school in Miami. We joked about it for years how I got him back for wrecking the T-Bird. As long as I owned the Nova replacement tires were always whitewalls as it came from the factory.
My daily driver is now a late model Camaro. With $ aftermarket redline tires are available by special order and look great on late model Camaro’s. But I recently changed out the tires & wheels on my Camaro and skipped the redline special order tires.
This has been a great series, Tom Halter, and no doubt plenty of work, so thankyou for that.
In Australia – England-founded, very white, very conservative across the era of the whitewall – whitewalls just weren’t seen. Too flashy, you see.
And being Aussie, I kind-of shared that idea, but I wonder: I’ve long had something akin to a secret love for the things, eagerly finding them in any (of the many) US shows on TV here back in the day. In a funny way, the “extravagance” of the whitewall was a signifier that marked out the US as being a fundamentally wealthier place than here, a place so clean that even the tires could be kept white. Crazy, I know – and even more abstractly, possibly even a bit racist? – but I do remember thinking along such lines.
They have no place on modern cars. As you mentioned, they go with the chrome, and without that, they look lost, like some tacky party leftover. And anyway, there IS no sidewall to stick ’em on now any more – and when it’s done, it just looks like the (inevitably old) driver has rubbed up against a curb.