White walls tires & mag wheels-traditional?

White walls tires & mag wheels-traditional? Growing up around the Pittsburgh, Pa area I don't remember seeing white wall tires on mag wheels. When our family moved to Virginia in 62, I didn't see any there either. I do remember seeing white wall slicks on mags, and chrome wheels. As I recall you put white wall tires on painted steel or chrome wheels. Back in the day if you had white wall tires you were driving a custom, mag wheels were for hot rods. Now a days it seems that white wall tires go on anything, just does not look right to me. Just wondering what you guys remember.

 

I'm with you - I posted a thread on this a few years ago. I absolutely hate the look but the kids nowadays who learned all they know from the interweb and weren't even born until decades later want to 'rewrite history' and preach to the guys that were there that it's traditional - you know, just like airbags and laying frame....

 

Sure, put wide whites on your Cragars. This is America, and you can drive a pimpmobile if you want to.

 

X3 on this. I grew up in Northern NJ, 20 miles from NYC. In the '50s and early '60s the cool look was black rims, white walls and baby moons. The other look was chrome wheels with white walls. I don't remember seeing mags until the mid-'60s and white walls started to fade, except for the thin white walls. Mags with wide white walls are a new thing, not traditional.

 

They were on stock bodied cars.

 

Finally, somebody who feels the way I do. Well said, Weasel.

A few weeks back I commented on how bad I hated whitewall slicks and how I feel that a Gasser with whitewalls is an abomination, and I got shellacked by the "traditionalists". Their "perceived" history and my "actual" history are obviously 180 degrees out of phase.

 

Me too...take me back.....pleeeeeeese

 

I grew up in the Pittsburgh area also, I don't think I ever saw white wall slicks back then. White walls and mags don't go together at all. Jibs

 

Not this again! The new tradition of the new and young is great! With out them and their "new" take on old cars, there would be what? A bunch of nursing homes full of memories of the the way it was? Really? Embrace the young who are rodding in a similar fashion as opposed to running them off because of a few differences in style for Christ sake!

How do you know when you are old?

WHen you start with "These damn kids nowadays!"

 

I guess it would depend on which era of tradition you are going for. 1940s and earlier hot rods have no mags (that goes for 1950s also) and hardly any white walls. I think mags are ugly and aren't hamb friendly unless you're building an early Curtis-like Indy car.

 

The word Traditional? Sometimes I don't understand! What is tradition for me isn't for you.
I was Hot Rodding in the late 60's. My tradition is to run what I can get my hands on are what I have.
Back then I would not have put a white wall on anything I had. I was young and only the old guys ran white walls. Now I am old and they are cool again. I love them! I am running them on a couple of my cars.
As far as what the young guys have going today, I love that and love hanging with them whenever I can.
White walls on mags, if you like it do it.

 

I think we have all forgotten that the Hamb is here for pre 1960 Hotrods and customs. Cars and posts have been very off topic for the last year or two . If you want to build a late 60 build thats cool, but just not here.


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Someone needs to tell Don Garlits he ain't turdishinal! He ran Halibrands with whitewall recaps from '56-59.

1959:


Restored:




..but on your basic '49-52 Chevy, not so much.

 

X3... I've always saw them on show cars and other fancy-pants things. I did see them on race cars, but was it because of the looks (some guys had really fancy race cars and keep them spotless all the time), or necessity (ie black walls not available in the size or compound desired). I occasionally saw them mounted with the white walls to the inside, too, as by the 60's only old men and show car guys wanted white walls of any kind. While the Garlits' museum car looks great, most of the racers at the track looked like the image of his rail with all fingerprints and grease covering them. Just like white upholstered wheel wells, who the heck wants them on a race or street car? Now I do like the looks of WW on other kinds of cars, just not with mags or on slicks. Gary

 

There are a lot of things that are okay today that wasn't then. Take the bare metal,clear coated or let it rust finish or the fake patena tradition. I agree mags usually didn't have white walls very few and far between maybe but that's the look know.

 

I was born in 1959. Which means I missed most of the HAMB friendly years. My pop had a small speed shop from about 65 till 72. I do remember a lot of guys running black wheels with chrome lug nuts, 1" or pinstripe whitewalls. If the guy had some money he had mag wheels with the same whitewalls or blackwalls, always a bit of arguement as to what was cool. If the guy had lots of money, he had a new car mag wheels and redlines or dual pinstripe whitewall. But this was in the just after the cutoff years. I would guess 66-67. I would have been 6 -7 years old. Wide white were on grandpop's car.

 

Pat, I can appreciate your view of the traditional car here, and I applaud all who build these cars and the work it takes to find all the right pieces to make a period correct hot rod. In fact, I would love to build a correct era '36 3 window someday, if the good lord decides I have that time here, but right now with the cars I have and I am building, my Galaxie in my avatar is my beater driver and I enjoy it's looks, 1968 American T70Rs with wide whitewalls and indian blanket seatcovers. My big build is a early 70s street freak (GASP!) that is being built to the kid who introduced me to cars at the tender age of 11 in 1973 and told me of his dream car and how he would build it someday, but somedays do not come for all, he died between out junior/senior year outrunning the cops in his 1967 Camaro and just like a cliché, in front of our high school!! So after his parents sold the farm a few years a go, I got the old car that started it all for me, and I dug thru my magazines and there I found my Honest Charlies and Blair Speed and even my vintage JC Whitney catalogs with all the speed parts circled from out youth so I knew what direction he was headed. WIth this long story is this, this car will not be HAMB friendly and therefore no thread build here, but I will build this street freak as I think is the spirit of things. Oh by the way, I have all the engine drivetrain bought and assembly starts in the spring, I will post it on Dogfight, where it is appropriate. FYI, a Dart steel block with billet caps, Callies best crank and rods, JE pistons, Dart CNC 360 aluminum heads, Ferrea valves, T&D rockers, 8-71 with 950 Holleys, Ram sintered iron slipper clutch, 5 speed Lenco trans, Strange 9" with 35 spline axles, S&W gasser ladder bars, and Sids drilled and straightend I beam '47-'54 Chevy axle, Torque thrust 15x5 and 15x12 wheels.... A street freak for sure.

The HAMB is the best but my interest vary so much that I belong to several other car forums including Dogfight, the Garage Journals and the ever controversial Yellow Bullet. Good day!

 

After scanning thru old RnC mags from '60-63, it seems pretty clear to me that whitewalls on chrome steelies, chrome wires, or polished cast wheels were fairly popular in the early-60's. A couple of obvious Monogram model examples below:

 

Of course guys put white wall tires on their cars!!! Anybody that says it didn't happen just wasn't into cars or wasn't born. Do your own research and look thru Hot Rod mags in the 50s and 60s.

You will find drag cars, customs and street driven cars. They were everywhere!!!!

You ran the wheels and tires you wanted or could afford. Sometimes the combination was mixed match until you could buy the other two wheels or tires. Who cared, you had a ride!!!

Look at pics of Stone Woods and Cook Willys and the High and Mighty Plymouth coupe.

How does this shit get started?? Some young-assed twerp decides he knows WTF was relevant back then? Do your homework!!!!

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Okay gang, I have touched on this on a couple of the T-Bucket threads that I have been paying most attention to lately, but here is the somewhat learned opinion of someone who has spent an entire 48 year lifetime studying this crap in the pages of magazines....

In the fifties, wide whites became a popular thing to some extent with hot rodders as the cars were leaned less and less from racing, and more and more to showing. By about '62 or so, in the automotive world of L.A., wide whites were very definitely on the "out" down swing in favor of black walls for those that were primarily influenced by drag racing, and narrow "pinner" whites for show cars and customs. This part is easy - Just pick up a stack of magazines from '61 and '62 and look. Fact.

As far as wide whites on mags? Normally. I'm the first to say a huge "NO"! BUT... In '59 American racing introduced their now famous Torque Thrust mag, and it was a hit immediately with the drag crowd as it was lot's cheaper than the Halibrands before them. They soon started showing up on "showier" street cars that were just starting to transition away from the wide white wall thing. IF you were building a car that reflected that 1959-1962 time period, and IF you are running an American Torque Thrust or Halibrand style that would have been available at the time, (that would be no holes, small windows and sport mags) or even a chrome reverse, Ya, go ahead, but the overall general detailing of the car better be enough to carry the day. Otherwise just rename yourself "Huggie Bear" and walk with a limp.There is a historic precedence for what you are contemplating. If you are talking a Cragar S/S, Keystone, Astro slots and Supremes, aluminum slots, things like that, then no... Back to Huggie Bear. All of those are post '65, and from what my buddies tell me, you would have been laughed out of the drive in you pulled into. Narrow "pinner" whites would be acceptable on a custom type vehicle or period show rod from this time frame, but a hot rod would have black walls...

Like I said, OPINIONS...

As exhibit "A" I present Bill Rolland's redo of Ivo's bucket from '61... And dammit, as much as it pains me to say this, I like this look!

 

White walls with mag style wheels?? NO!
It is okay to run chrome reversed rims with white walls but the look just seems wrong to me on anything with 5 spokes unless youre running piecrust slicks.

Just my opinion.

 

Traditional compared to what? What you saw in your area or a magazine that had a hidden agenda of setting trends? Or what you saw at a drag strip one day? Or what some old guy told you, to make you gasp and awe?

There seems to be the way it was done by the majority and the shit that gets a pass because someone heard of it being done in Callamazoo, Oklahoma one time or by a drag racer, without any spares, who installed some shit on his car for a pass and some bozo snapped a pic and forgot to label it properly.

All kinds of shit can be called traditional, if the bull shitter works at it. That's why there are only about 50 REAL traditional hot rods or customs on this site. And yea, those old geezers know and it's dying with them. I don't blame them for stretching the truth or flat out lying. You know why they do that? So you can THINK for yourself and build YOUR own damn car, Not what theirs used to be.

 

They can do what they want but stop trying to tell the old farts that they are mass delusional and that it really wasn't the way they remember it. One or two examples do NOT make a tradition. Every time the subject of airbags comes up (way to often IMO) some goon starts spouting 'ala Kart had them'. Just because one or two cars had them that does not mean it was a tradition. To be a tradition it has to be reasonably widespread or commonplace.

Merriam Webster says:

1
a : an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom)

2
: the handing down of information, beliefs, and customs by word of mouth or by example from one generation to another without written instruction

Judging by the responses on this thread wide whitewalls on mags were very much the exception and thus were not a 'customary action', nor 'handing down of information by example from one generation to another'.

Very simply this was not a tradition anymore than airbags, rusty or faux patina, clearcoat over bare metal, skulls, spiderwebs, 'laying frame' - where the vehicle looks as though it's suspension has suffered catastrophic failure - or a myriad of other fads invented by the current generation. The problem is the interweb and the proliferation like wildfire of 'urban legends'. If you were not even born until after the time in question do not presume to tell people who were there 'how it really was'. Hell, when your parents or grandparents are reminiscing do you butt in to tell them 'You got it all wrong - I wasn't born at the time but I read about it all on the internet and I remember it quite differently'.

Mind you if you survived the sixties it's a miracle if you have any memory at all....

 

Are we having fun here, or what? Sheesh.

 

^ Yep, on them thar show rods and such. Nobody I knew or even saw in '62 drove cars like that on the street in the midwest. We saw cars like that at the big indoor custom car shows at McCormick place in Chicago or Indy, where I remember seeing Ala Kart for the first time one year. Come to think of it, nobody I knew or saw in '62 drove cars like that on the street either, even if they had the green-backs to have them. And don't forget the model car guys were in bed with the car show guys, big time. Gary

 

Same bullshit, different day.

 

This thread sucks.................

 

BAM! And and a high 5!