History Hot Rod Hubcaps

By request . . . from a few years back....
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Hot Rod Hubcaps


And maybe a little on custom hubcaps as well.

Hubcaps, at least to me, being an all inclusive term for wheel covers as well as ....... hubcaps.

Hubcaps and the lack thereof were almost always one of the first styling changes to be made on what car owners - usually young ones with their first car - did to differentiate their car from the general public.

In the early days, most times, better handling wasn’t particularly sought after.
First up was change and next was - my favorite Toolman comment - "More Power."

We didn’t know we were "Toolmen" at the time and we didn’t sing out the praises of "More Power like the Toolman does, but we knew that "More Power" was what it was all about.

Making us and our fathers before us Toolmen.

Did I make that clear?
Hope so.
If I didn’t, don’t really care....

So what the heck did a guy do once he had his first car?
Or even the second or third?

A hubcap swap was, as stated, one of the first things done.
Even if it was no more than popping the caps off and running with bare wheels.
More than a few guys did this one and it did set the car off from the stockers running the streets.
It helped to run big & little’s in the rubber dept.
Stock sized tires run with bare wheels just didn’t look right.
Especially so to me, but a lot of guys ran them.

The bare wheels were usually painted with a non-stock color and not always red.
Other favored colors were white as well as black with an occasional blue one showing up now and then.

Some of the very best of these had a pinstripe laid on the outer bead flange.
The pinstripe not as hard to apply as you would imagine.

Most times done by simply jacking up the car, loading up a pinstripe brush, holding the brush in your hand, lay your hand on a convenient brace - most times a jackstand - apply the brush and slowly spin the wheel with your free hand.
It didn’t take long and most times it laid out a pretty nice line.
Best way to hold the brush was sometimes argued, but if it was stiff enough and the flat handled Grumbacher black brushes usually were, it would allow it to be held with the brush up or cocked off at a very slight angle to the right.
Paint consistency made a big difference too.
Not too thin was the key here.
At least a little thicker than you’d normally use on pinstriping body panels.

This particular touch - the contrasting color pinstripe - on the wheel made for a very nice look when combined with a small hubcap.

Beauty rings were a nice touch, but in most cases were not run.
The painted wheel, small cap, a pinstriped wheel and that was about it.

All of which is funny in a small way.
The 50 Fords, and I owned several of them, had one of the nicest beauty rings around.
The beauty rings - several sets - ended up hanging in dad’s garage and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that they were still there.

The early Fords, for the most part ran the small caps that came with them.
At least the 40-48 Ford guys did.
And those only until 15" wheels were on the car and the larger wheel covers installed.
Sometimes a different year Ford cap was run, but most times it was the original one.

Going to the muchly desired 15" wheel for both the 40's era Fords and the Chevy’s was one of the first conversions done.

Some of the aftermarket wheel covers that were available came in both 15" and 16" sizes, but once Detroit started making interesting wheel covers, 15" wheels were what you needed.
There was a lot of crossover between customs and hot rods as far as wheel covers went.

The 55-56 Buicks with their simple and clean wheel cover with red plastic center insert were popular as well.
I ran a set of these on both the 50 Ford sedan and one of the 50 Ford coupes.
They looked good and if I ever did another 50 Ford, the Buick caps would be the first choice.

Two of the most popular aftermarket covers, these seen in the early 50's for the most part were the full coverage moons and the later flipper model moons.
These moon covers were not like the Moon discs of the latter 50's.
The moon wheel covers were simply a nice looking cover, chrome plated, very rounded and a nice finishing touch on customs and mild customs.
With only two required as most of the mild and full customs ran skirts and the rear wheels were completely hidden.
Especially so when the ‘Bubble Skirts’ came in during the mid-late 50's.

Skirts weren’t found on too many hot rods in the mid-late 50's, in fact, virtually none in California. They were pretty much the province of the customs.
And the customs, being a fairly individualistic endeavor were many times seen without skirts.
Said skirts being a bit of a holdover from the 40's, but they did have a degree of popularity in the 50's.

Skirts were useful on hot rods though.
Especially if you running one in ‘sleeper’ mode.
I did this little trick when I got one of my 50 Ford coupes running with a built Olds engine, 41 Caddy side shift trans, Hurst shifter and 4.27 geared Mercury wagon rear end.

I’d just moved to Newhall, California to a new job and found a set of 49-51 Ford skirts hanging in the garage of the little country home we were renting.

The coupe was running as a sleeper, quiet mufflers, one tailpipe showing, the other hidden, 6.70 x 15 whitewalls all round with the small stock 50 Ford caps and sitting at stock height.
Somewhere along the line I got the bright idea to pop the skirts on before my first trip to town on a Saturday night to check out the local hot rod population.

The only things that gave away the game as far as sleeper mode went were the tach on the steering column and the easily hidden Hurst shifter on the floor.
Easily hidden by virtue of a casual move by the drivers leg pretty much hid the shifter from view.
The little fact that the shifter laid up against and to an extent on the seat when in low or high made it hard to see when you looked inside the drivers window from the outside.
Provided the driver was in the car.
I was most times, I didn’t leave the car alone the first few weeks it was running.
Virtually no one noticed the removed column shift lever.

The skirts worked out well for the first couple of weekends.
Most guys figured an out of town car wearing skirts couldn’t be very fast.
A couple of Chevy runners paid the price though.

After that, there weren’t any more locals to fool and I pulled the skirts.
It was fun while it lasted.

Eventually somebody got the bright idea to put a 1/4" thick or so single blade across the moon wheel covers.
I don’t remember for sure what these covers were called, Ripple Bar hubcaps rings a bell.
As does flipper hubcaps.

In any event, they looked great and were very eye catching when rolling down the street at typical 25-30 mph in town speeds.
Highway speeds, another story. The blades just disappeared from view.

A few hot rod guys ran these, but they never got real popular with the thin fender crowd.
Thin fenders being defined as 28-34 Fords.

There were a few T’s built and running around, but only one that I can remember that was of any real consequence.
This one, a 27 T roadster pickup - very low for the time - with all the fenders, chopped windshield, top and a built flathead that eventually segued into a Chevy engine - an SBC to be exact, but with no BBC’s around at the time, we just called em Chevy’s.
The Chevy’s chosen more for their performance value than for ease of installation.

The thin fendered cars back then usually ran the smaller Ford caps, probably due to their ready availability and the small fact that they fit right on if you had the right wheels and most times they did.

Eventually, the 55 Olds Fiesta wheel covers with their three small blades came into being.
The first set of these that I ever saw was in late 1955 and they were running on a metallic green torpedo back 50 Olds with built engine, 37 Cad-LaSalle floor shift and white T&R.
The T&R from TJ of course.

The Olds Fiesta’s were stunningly eye catching and caught on like wildfire.
It wasn’t long until darned near everybody ran em and those that didn’t lusted after them.

‘Course, the guy with the torpedo back Olds had a leg up on everybody as he worked the Chevy-Oldsmobile parts counter downtown.
For a while there, he was the guy to see where the Fiesta’s were concerned.
Seems like prices were right around $25. - $30. a set.
I couldn’t swing it at the time, but the parts guy gave me a set of the little 56 Chevy hubcaps that were dealer take-offs.
He had two 4' tall stacks of these things sitting in the back room and they were forever getting in the way.
He was supposed to sell them, but nobody wanted them.
He stuck four of them in my hands, pointed me at the back door and said, "So long."
I could take a hint....

They worked for me, I popped em on the 50 Ford sedan which was my first car and along with a nicely painted set of black wheels, duals and a dropped front end on a black car things were looking good.
And if not good, at least better.

Once the dust settled out from the influx of 55 Olds Fiesta’s, the 56 Oldsmobiles came out with their larger tri-bladed wheel cover, again, called the Fiesta. These even more eye catching than the 55 Fiesta’s and once again the rush was on.
For a while there, every car that could fit them ran the fat bladed Fiesta’s.

The Fiesta’s always run with whitewalls.
In fact, most hot rod/custom cars ran whitewalls.
They were the ‘hot set-up’ and most desired.
And the thinner the better, although the thinner WW’s didn’t really come in until the late 50's.
When I say thin, I mean real thin.
Perhaps 2" wide or so with narrower ones coming on line a short way down the road.

Next up to hit the hit parade on the hubcap/wheel cover bit were the fabled Moon discs.
The first set of these to show up in town were on a fire engine red - the good fire engine red and not the orangey red that became popular later on - 5 window Deuce coupe running a built Desoto engine with four 2 bbl’s inline, Herbert roller and all the good stuff including a black and white TJ T&R job.
He had a set of the screw-on Moon discs along with a set of big & little blackwalls.
It made for a standout car as whitewalls were what most ran at the time.
A bit retrograde a few thought, but I really liked the look.
The little Deuce coupe was fast, looked fast, sat right with it’s dropped axle front end and had that serious no-nonsense hot rod look about it.

The screw-on Moon discs was the only way they came.
At least from Moon.
Later on, Pep Boys et al carried snap-on discs, but they weren’t such a great product and to my eye not too good looking either.
They didn’t look quite right compared to gennie Moon discs.
They had their flaws too.
The biggest one being their simple inability to remain on the car.

My friend was forever bombing around corners and losing the front disc.
Best one was when it rolled into a TV store on the S/E corner of Seaward and Main in Ventura.
Customers and salesmen were so stunned that they didn’t say a word when I walked in, picked it up and walked out to the fire engine red 49 Ford coupe sitting at the curb.

The Deuce coupe was a standout car all by itself.
It was when it ran black primer and little Merc caps.
The red paint, Moon discs and blackwalls made for a standout little car.

It had stock bumpers at first and then a nicely made set of tubular bumpers or nerf bars if you want to call em that were made and installed front and rear.
Said bumper/nerfs running the width of the car

I liked the look of the Moon discs as did most guys, but for most the problem was, where the heck do you get em?
A small problem that had a few wondering for a while.

I took the direct approach as I knew the Deuce owner casually and simply asked him where he got his.
He told me to call Moon in Santa Fe Springs, get a price, send em a money order and wait by the mailbox.
Which I did posthaste.
I shipped off the $33. money order and waited - a bit impatiently - for the Moon discs.
After a week and a half or so they came.
Nicely packed in a thin cardboard box and once opened it was easy to see that they were a thing of mechanical beauty.
Even better up close than as viewed on the little Deuce Coupe.

A thing of beauty with no holes whatsoever.
Not a problem for dad, he took em to work, clamped em together, laid em out and drilled em all at the same time which was a nice touch.
It gave me a disc that would fit any wheel as vs. some of the guys that drilled the discs individually and somewhere along the line gave themselves fits when they lost track about which disc went where.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I sprung for a new set of tires, blackwalls, 5.50 x 15's in front.
The 5.50's made for Volkswagons.
And a pair of 8.20 x 15's in back, this size geared toward the Caddy’s.

With one coil out of the front springs, bumper guards removed front and rear, pipes, fairly new Titian red paint job, nosed and partially decked with the plastic shield gone from the trunk lid, but the trunk handle remaining, fully pinstriped as well as a small set of flames emanating from the front wheel wells, a white naugahyde TJ tarp over the back seat with white naugahyde package shelf, good shape original gray cloth seats and side panels as well as a mild flathead, the Moon discs were the finishing touch.
They were the second set in town and me & the Deuce coupe owner enjoyed our one of a kind look for a while.
A short while as it turned out, in a couple of months a whole lot of guys were running the Moon discs.
A lot of em got swiped as all it took was a screwdriver to get em off.

I did ok there as dad brought me a full set of 8-32 Allens, drill, tap and wrench when he brought the discs home from the oil patch garage where he worked and I never got hit where the Moon discs were concerned.
As cheap as they were, hardly anyone carried a set of Allen wrenches.

A little while after the Moon discs got popular, the first version of the four bladed Dodge Lancers came into being.
These got fairly popular, but they were still outnumbered by the 56 Olds Fiesta’s.

For a while there, the town was awash in hot rods and customs as well as a few stocker’s running some kind of flipper style wheel cover.
The were hard to ignore when you saw them coming down the street.
They grabbed your attention like nobody’s business.

Eventually the Desoto powered 5 window Deuce coupe went on to be a dedicated drag race car.
A larger Desoto engine with six two bbl’s. Packard trans, Halibrand quick change and Vertex magneto were installed.
The tubular front bumper was removed to allow use of a tow bar, but the rest of the car remained as it was.
Full upholstery and all.
Eventually the owner built a Jimmy blown Desoto, installed that in a Deuce roadster along with the quick change and the 5 window was sold as an engineless car for $400.
All this taking place around 58-59 or so.

The owner of the Deuce coupe, being a bit of a forward thinking guy and one who always had a good eye for how a car should be built and set up bought a brand new black 57 Plymouth two door as a tow car.
A little cranking on the torsion bars got this one down in front, a set of the stock pointed Plymouth wheel covers along with a dual exhaust made for one simple, clean looking, good stance car that was the tow car for the Deuce coupe as well as his every day car.

Once again, the Deuce coupe owner had set a new fad in motion and the pointed Plymouth wheel covers got very popular.

Not too much longer and wheel covers as well as hubcaps were passe’ for most.
Chrome wheels entered the scene and if you thought the Fiesta’s had taken over fast, the chrome wheels were everywhere on everything.
In a matter of a couple of months it seemed.

The chrome wheels combined with a baby moon hubcap made for a great looking wheel.
Only trouble was, they cost right around a hundred bucks a set which put them out of reach for most of us.
It did me.

Not too much longer, in the very early 60's, American I think it was, introduced their 5 spoke ‘mag’ wheel and the market pretty much dropped out of sight for the chromie’s.

The 5 slot mags came in shortly after that and it was all over but the shouting.

The spinner/flipper style of wheel covers along with the little hubcaps fell out of favor and you only saw them on a few cars now and then.

The little caps remained on a few thin fendered die-hard serious hot rod runners and the flipper wheel covers remained on a few customs.

Said customs at times, painting the inside section behind the flippers with gold metal flake, sometimes adding a set of blades to the earlier Fiesta’s making for a six bladed spinner.
Even so, then the mags came in, that was pretty much the death knell for caps and covers.

All of which brings to mind a comment I keep seeing.
That of building a car to a theme.

My question being, what theme and when?

Hot rods and customs were always in a state of flux and changes went on constantly.
Monthly if not weekly.

Mix and match was the name of the game and whatever fit - even it you had to massage it a little bit - was fair game.
Like always, you had to remain within the bounds of good taste, but with all the great cars running the streets in the 50's and 60's it wasn’t hard to do.

The rules - of which there were really none - were simple.
Your car, your way, fast, done right and done safe.
Not too hard to remember and not too hard to do.....

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Girls - not mentioned as car owners as they didn’t run hot rods or customs.
Not like they do nowadays.

Granted, there were a few forward thinking women that found out how much fun the hot rod game was and they were there at the start.

Even so, these were rare women and seldom found.

The girls in my era sometimes ran a restored car, but most times a stocker.

Girls viewed the cars for what they were worth.
Not worth in the monetary sense, but worth as an actual transportation device to take them to their chosen destinations.

We in turn viewed the girls for what they were worth.

Again, not worth in the monetary sense, but as beautiful and desirable young women.

We weren’t building hot rods and customs to impress the guys.......

 

Great read, gave me a good idea of what it was like, I was born in the 60's.

 

very cool info, thanks for sharing !

 

Great read C9, I remember the first thing we used to do as young guys, we'd flip the lid over on the aircleaner when you borrowed he rents car to get that high performance sound!!

 

Thank you that was awsome!

 

Great essay C9, you really covered a wonderful time in our development.

Being of the low buck group my standard mod was no hubcaps and black wheels.......simple, cheap, and left what little money I had to put into the engine mods.

<-------
Actually still works.

 

That was a really great read..Lots of info...Thanks..

 

Thanks for re-posting this, C9. It's a fun read, and matches my recollections almost exactly.

I notice that the earliest of the popular spinner hubcaps still look the best to me -- 1st seried Fiestas and Lancers, '55 Buick Roadmasters, done. Never cared for 2nd series Fiestas, Mercs, Edsels, or any of the other latecomers to the spinner catalog. 2nd series Lancers were kinda cool, but they had a kind of Bellflower/Pompadour vibe to them that was much more custom than rod.

Anyway, thanks again for the look back. A favorite topic of mine.

 

Nice reading ! The '56 Olds is almost always (even when new) called a Fiesta, although Olds people called them Starfires. The dozens of aftermarket Starfires with the 1/2" grid background were called wafflebacks, checkerbacks, or starfish at times, & many had every other square painted a different color or glitter glued on. Starfires and Fiestas were the most stolen hubcap in the history of the automobile ! It's not unusual the find the with the original car's serial # or owner's social security # etched somewhere - all too often on the outside ...
Easy way to tell if a '53 - '56 Olds spinner cap is genuine or aftermarket - Olds caps don't rust, aftermarkets do.

 

Cool .......

 

Jay, your essay on hot rod hub caps brought memories flooding back to me tonight.
The very first changes my brother and I made to our constantly evolving rides was the wheels.
Neither of us had any money but we did keep a big stash of wheels, tires and assorted hubcaps behind my parents barn.
These caps and other period accessories came from the junk yards we haunted and used car lots around town we used to visit.
We had a pretty good size stash.
As soon as a new ride was in our possession, my brother Doug and I would shoot it out back behind the barn where nobody could bother us and the car's transformation would start.
Doug and I would first wash down the wheels with an acid solution cleaner we named "pink stuff".
If you spayed it indoors, you'd be left gaging and choking within seconds. ( Can you spell brain damage?)
After the wash we'd follow up with a scuff with some sand paper and then a blast of primer from a rattle can.
Krylon was our exclusive choice of wheel paint top coat.
It flowed out nice 'n smooth, dried fast, wore like iron, and smelled good too.
(More brain damage maybe?)
My first car, a 50 Plymouth we shot the wheels in red Krylon, hit the body in suede powder blue and then the J.C. Whitney catalog produced a set of spun Moon Discs.
This was around 1961 I think.
The next ride was my '40 Pontiac coupe that my brother and my 3 best friends and I plopped a 303" Olds into.
We swapped a set of 15" wheels onto that, some wide white Port A Walls and Kryloned the wheels gloss black.
We blew thru several '56-'57 Bel Airs and a '61 Impala sedan and those always received the same drill. Narrow white stripe white walls, black painted rims and if we could afford it, some chrome wheel lug nuts.
Mag style wheels were almost never seen by us during this era although chrome reversed wheels seemed to be coming on strong about this time.
The rich kids bought those.
About 1966 I bought a cherry condition '58 Corvette, light metallic blue. matching color hard top and huge 4" wide white wall tires.
The Esso gas station I worked nights at provided me a good deal on a new set of Atlas Bucron black walls.
Off went the wide whites and my brother and I were now Bucron Street Rats.
Doug got a hold of a gold metallic tire crayon and he and I filled in the half inch groove on the side-wall with the gold.
Now we had a set of "gold lines" for cheap money.
Doug did the same drill on his '62 S55 Monterey hard top and his dark blue '65 Mustang fastback except he made those into Blue Streaks with a blue tire cryon. Tres chic!
I kept the steel rims light metallic blue and hung the 'Vette's wheel covers on the barn's wall.
looked racy!
About the summer of '67 I went into Ellis the Rim Man next to Boston University on Commonwealth Avenue and spotted a set of just released "Mickey Thompson Rader" mag styled wheels.
They had a natural aluminum finish center and a chromed outer rim.
Beautiful looking rims!
The 3 bladed hollow spinner with M/T emblazoned in red didn't hurt either.
The salesman let me have them for $175.
They were the first and only set of mags I've ever bought in my life.
I ran the M/T wheels in the warm months and switched back to blue steelies and no caps in the winter.
Still to this day I run either painted or chromed steelies with white walls on my hot rods.
I do have a nice set of nearly new big 'n little Michelin radial black walls for those long road trip.
Don't have any mag wheels though.
Those American Racing Torque Thrust ll's everyone runs these days do kinda tempt me though.
They might throw my cars into the wrong theme though.
In the 50's and 60's my big things were shiny black painted rims, white walls and chrome shorty style exhaust dumps behind the front tires.
Also a top o' the dash tachometer and clear red wires under a louvered hood were must haves too.
I did try some chrome baby moons once on my fuelie Bel Air I owned thru the mid 60's. They look okay but the car really popped to life when I dressed it out with a set of triple white stripe General Dual Nintys's, the black rims, the little moons and a nice rake to it.
Rims and tires were a big part of it back then.
It was all in what we could afford and what we could make good use of.
Remember the later 60's thru the 80's.
Rally Wheel sickness set in then. We were all guilty of that, right?

 

Had to resurrect this one as it was written by a man who was a wealth of knowledge and really knew how to get it across.

What a great read!

You are missed.






BloodyKnuckles

 

Definitely a good read...thank you.

 

So nice to see one of C9's threads pop up again, thanks


yes sadly missed RIP



.

.

 

As a West Coast boy (Oregon) in the same time frame, I can vouch for the accuracy of C9's post, absolutely dead on. Brings tears to your eyes if you grew up in that time frame. We didnt have Street Rods, Rat Rods and so on, only "Hot Rods", if you doubt that just ask any of the parents of the "Chicks", (that are still with us,) we were dating or trying to date. The worst you would call your car was a "Beater"!! Life was SO MUCH SIMPLER then. Gas was 19 cents a gallon and you could cruise all night for a couple of bucks!!
I never got the chance to meet C9 however would have liked to as our thoughts seem to parallel in many ways, think we would have enjoyed each others memories, always enjoyed his posts.
Rest in Piece C9. you are in a far greater place. never know, I might meet you one of these days yet!!

 

the sweetest

 

Thanks for the nice essay.......really enjoyed

 

I was born in 1944, graduated in 1962, so loved reading this.
Thanks much for posting......
Cheers,
Bob

 

RIP C-9, I had almost forgotten how enlightening his posts were.....Thanks for posting Bloody.

 

When the Lancer caps originally came out, were they 14" only, or did they make them in 15"?

 

Bloody, I just bumped the same story a few days ago. It never fails, I get to the bowels of the HAMB and there's a tech, or a short story from Jay. I miss his posts and wisdom dearly.

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?p=5778280#post5778280

 

I remember the night when onna the guys with a '57 4-dr Chevy that had stock plain jane big hubcaps on it said that he'd like to have the stock '57 Chevy spinners that were on a used '57 sitting right in front of the Ford Dealership at the junction of old Hwy 36 and Hwy 63 back in like '64 or so.

Anyway, the next thing we know is onna the other guys with us came back five minutes later with them under his lightweight jacket, saying, here, throw these in your trunk!

And the next day, my '57 4-Dr. Chevy had a "new" set of stock big hubcaps on it instead of the "dog-dish" jobbers and Ray's car had the spinners on it!!

He, He!!

And to this day, I really like the stock Chevy early '70's chromed "dog-knotted" baby-moons with the embossed "Bowtie" logo on them. I want to say off either the cheap Custom 300 Chevelles or the cheap Novas??

As Toad's GF would say, "They're Bitchin!!"... He, He!!

pdq67

 

'55-'56 Lancers were 15":



You're probably thinking of the '57-up styles, which were 14". They were quite different in design from the ones shown above, with very long skinny spinner bars. That style was also repopped by aftermarket manufacturers, and some of those may have been available in 15".

 

Yes, that was exactly what I was trying to find out. So the 15" long bar re-pops would not be period correct. The '55-'56 cap you posted is REALLY neat. Thanks for the info.

 

Don't remember how I got to this post but at 72 years old I do remember the 19 cents a gallon fuel and working for 25 cents an hour at The Local Texaco Station!
The only other Hub Cap That was Held in AWE at that time was the Famed 57 Caddy! I still have a set I got when I was 15 Years old, along with the Old's Fiestas That come in the same Time frame. The Caddy's are on my 48 Chevy coupe; 265 Chevy Corvette powered, frenched headlight's, built in 1958 in Denison Texas.