The Cragar wheels on my 1963.5 Ranchero are rare 13x5.5 manufactured in 1971. When purchased, two were NOS and still in unopened boxes.
I guess I'm slipping, I thought Cragar had a flat spoke version back in the 60s also.. I've seen peeled ones sand blasted and painted Argent Silver and they looked great.. In my area they always peeled or pitted even the ones from the sixties, salt and rain I guess..
Old style flat spoke ones were called the GT. I believe they were made in a chrome or painted version. The SS was made in either chrome or polished center.
You might be thinking of AP's ( Appliance Plating) wheels, they had a much flatter spoke. I've seen numerous AP's with Cragar center caps also. Now that you've jogged my memory; any time I saw AP's they made me think of model car wheels as they had that slight lip on the edge of the spoke like those wheels you twisted off the model cars' chrome tree that always needed cleaned up.
I may be showing my age but I think all these funky new wheels just suck. I like the Cragar wheels and the chrome reversed wheels the best. Bruce.
Yeah, that was a dumb move, like when Coca Cola decided to change their 100 yr old winning formula to the "new Coke". Too many cooks that can't leave anything alone.
The ones from the '60s are the worse for peeling. The process for plating aluminum was still trying to work itself out. Back in the '90s I ran into a guy at a large car show that had some that looked new but the centers were polished instead of plated. I asked him if that was some sort of new wheel with Crager center caps. He told me that they were actually old originals that he had refurbished for his car. I guess there was a place up north that was re-rimming them. The rims were new chrome rims and he opted to polish the centers instead of plating them. He said that the cool thing was that you could take any mismatched set and had many options for rim width and offset. Seemed pretty cool to me.
Boy the things you can remember when you're memory gets jogged. In 1971 when I put Cragars on my 57 my neighbor (older) apparently got a little jealous and ordered a set for his 69 Firebird convertible, he took them to the local tire shop to get mounted and they broke the centers out of ALL FOUR OF THEM. He took them to small claims court and the judge asked if he had any photos of them prior to mounting and of course he didn't...........he then threw the case out of court.
I started a Facebook group for vintage mags and one of the members posted this, he didn't have the black rims out for this photo but the silver one is called "sparkler" and his photo was picked by Cragar to be in a calendar. Vintage Mag Wheels.. Show/Buy/Sell/Trade
I have had Cragar wheels on probably a half dozen cars of mine but now I am sort of tired of them. I'm thinking of just going with chromed reversed wheels instead. The wheels offered now days are just butt ugly and I don't, won't, do billet anything.
This orphan followed me home from the swap meet after I sold all my others. 14x4, narrowed down from a 14x6. Older gent said he had em in his GTO. Center was painted red. He only wanted five bucks.
Cragars never lasted for shit in these parts. Great looking wheels though. Wish I'd have kept the pair of 15X4's I used up front when I was straight lining.....
I think that Cragar still makes both wheels both the rounded and the flatter style. I looked at the Jegs catalogue and I believe they have both styles. The difference is in the series of the wheels. The 61C series looks to be the rounder one and the 08/61 series is the flatter one. That's the way it looks anyways.
Can't see very well but these were bought new and put on the car in '71. They look like round spokes to me but I really don't remember.
Hello, Back in the early hot rod days, these Cragars were added to the cruisers and hot rods for their strength. When they came out to the general public, many teenagers got rid of their chrome wheels and added the 5 spoke S/S wheels. These S/S wheels added just enough splash for the custom/hot rod look. They were challenging the local favorite 5 spoke American Mag Wheels in popularity. Since the American Mag Wheels cost a lot more, the Cragar S/S wheels were gaining in sales. Jnaki Last November, while on vacation, there was a great example of a cool cruiser in the parking lot of our resort hotel in Goleta, CA. There was a Mercury Comet station wagon with all of the goodies that reminded me of this time past from the late 50s to the mid 60s in style and function. It was a very cool cruising wagon. The custom Comet fit the theme of the resort hotel’s “surfer style” from the 60’s. It was a great example of Cragar S/S wheels on a station wagon. The station wagon had just enough custom stuff to be a show piece of the 50s-60s theme. The S/S wheels added the final touch of the look.
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