It’s not uncommon downtown to see old cars with huge wheels and ultra-low-profile tires. In my personal upper-middle-aged opinion they look completely wrong and horrible. I’m talking about an ’85 Caprice or 88 Royale with 24-inch wheels and 25-series rubber. However, that concept, in reasonable proportions, actually looks pretty good on this first-generation Chrysler Concorde.
Due to Chrysler’s somewhat shoddy build quality and the all-too-obvious cost-cutting, not many 1993-1997 first-generation L/H cars remain today, but they were plentiful back in the day because they were jaw-droppingly beautiful.
Brendan Saur and JP Cavanaugh have already covered the L/H cars (links at the end of the post), so I won’t go into a deep history here. I’ll just say that since Bob Lutz was able to keep Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca’s “suggestions” at bay – he effectively had the development team ignore them – these cars were free of landau tops, wire wheel covers, and excessive chrome.
Fortunately, this surprisingly pristine early Concorde is NOT an example of either the newer Hi-Riser movement – putting oversized wheels on older mid-and full-sized American sedans and jacking up the ride height – or the old-school Low Rider. It looks like the owner maintained the factory ride height and added more restrained modern 20- or 22-inch wheels, and the result goes much better with the swoopy Concorde than any boxy B Body.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this one likely has the base 153-horsepower, 12-valve 3.3-liter V6 and the standard wheel covers, though it is possible that the 214-horsepower, 3.5-liter 24-valve V6 is under the hood. The reason I’m leaning toward a base-spec model is that the alloy wheels that came with higher-trimmed Concordes were absolutely stunning. To my eyes, these wheels come close to Pontiac’s diamond-spoke wheels of the late ’70s & early ’80s as some of the nicest factory wheels ever. I’m hoping that the owner of this model didn’t toss those wheels and replace them with these. However, this being downtown, it’s also likely that the original wheels were stolen, but the condition says that this car lives in a nice locked garage.
While I’m not a fan of Hi-Riser or Low-Rider culture, I’ve always supported replacing crappy factory wheels with a nice set of aftermarket wheels. In the ‘70s and early ‘80s, there wasn’t a car that looked bad with a nice set of Cragars.
The same goes for those cool slotted mags.
In the latter half of the ‘80s and early ‘90s, BBS wheels ruled.
I had one coworker who put black-laced BBS wheels on his red ’82 Corolla, and the result was so nice I wish I had a picture. A classmate’s dad bought a black ’85 Prelude Si and immediately bought a set gold-laced BBS wheels, putting the Si’s wheels on his wife’s base Prelude, which came with plastic wheel covers (to this day, I’m still not sure how this family of five went out together when the only vehicle choices were Mom’s Prelude or Dad’s Prelude).
As for this Concorde, upgrading a car from the ‘90s with a modern wheel-tire combo wouldn’t work in a lot of cases. Can you picture a ’93 Lumina with these wheels? It works here because the Concorde wouldn’t look out of place in a showroom today.
I take that back. Seeing any sedan in a showroom of one of the Big Three would be out of place. But that’s another pet peeve of mine.
Related Reading:
Curbside Classic: 1993 Eagle Vision – DeSoto 2.0
Curbside Classic: 1997 Dodge Intrepid ES – This Changes Everything
I was at a Big Three dealer yesterday. The showroom and the lot outside were nothing but ginormous pickup trucks.
Hmm. I also am not a fan of GIANT wheels on any car really.
I have to ask, Did you make up the term “Hi-Riser”? I have never heard it until this article. (And I’m not afraid to say that I do have a bit of an ear on the pulse of different car cultures (like them or not).
~T
It’s a real thing!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-riser
Chryslers’ Cab-Forward era was brief but glorious. Once again, crappy quality was the undoing of cars that deserved better. The Pentastar had a grievous conservation-of-matter issue since 1957: One could have a pretty car, or a well-made one, but not both.
We had two of these in our family. In 1997 we got a 94 with the 3.3 and just a few options. It was cobalt blue metallic, like the one pictured, but with steel wheels and hubcaps. It was a great car that we took everywhere. In 2002, we got a call about a low mileage 96 that my parents got for a low price. It was a 96 LXi with the 3.5 and with all options except a sunroof in dark green and tan leather. It was a huge upgrade from the 94! The only reason we got rid of it was we no longer had a need for it. But I loved the 96!
The way to tell what motor is the 3.3 had the single exhaust tip while the 3.5 had the dual exhaust tip.
I think anything done in moderation can work, fitting huge 24-26” wheels and literally lifting the suspension like a 4×4 truck to fit them is an extreme. Fitting 20” wheels on tires whose overall height is the same as stock can visually work fine
I don’t have a fundamental problem with wheel upsizing unless the proportions don’t flatter them, I tend to get more precious about it with 60s-70s cars since the designers clearly penned them around 14” wheels to exaggerate low long wide appearance and big wheels effectively make the cars look smaller than they are. By the 90s if you look at a lot of the pre-clay drawings by designers they actually seemed to desire larger wheels than the production cars got.
Surprisingly, I don’t so much mind the size of these wheels, it’s the style that bugs me. The spokes look too thin, too delicate almost to support the car. I would prefer something with thicker spokes. I assume there must be brakes back there somewhere, but they diappear into the shadows – which makes the thin spokes stand out all the more.
But don’t the original wheels on the purple/grey factory car look tiny! Yet back in the day these would have been, what, 16s? 17s? Wonder what this one rides like now?
I agree the narrow spokes don’t work for me either.
In the 90s when these stupid buggy wheels were cool, some idiots took it to the next level with spinners that kept spinning at the same speed when the car stopped. It looked like the wheels were always turning. Fortunately the fad went away.
Added these 5-spoke wheels to my ‘88 Fiero…always thought they set it off nicely, of course IMHO.
On that subject I have 18×9/10” Bullitt/Torq Thrust style wheels on my 94 Cougar that originally came with 15×6.5s. I quite like it.
Not generally a fan. On this ride, however, concede they look very good.
I agree that these wheels don’t look too bad on this Concorde.
After looking at the pictures for a bit, one reason (to me, at least) I think the large-diameter wheels kind of work here is that they accentuate the thin lines in the Concorde’s design, particularly in the front. The front fascia is narrow, as is the space between the wheel arch and the hood, and the thin windshield pillars. To my eye, the thin sidewall tires and the slender wheel spokes integrate pretty well.
That Ranger is riding on Ford wheels, just from a Crown Victoria/Grand Marquis, my son’s 02 GM came with them.
I put some 92 CV wheels on my MIL’s Ranger since it had the 14″ wheels and tire availability was very slim.
Some of the biggest piles of garbage ever. I mean it is a Chrysler product.