Always remember we are talking about Atlas Bucrons being compared to other bias ply tires of that era. If you were a street racer in the early 60s you ran Bucrons to get out of the hole, not for tread wear life. They were soft and gripped.
like I said before Dyno Don Nicolson ran (and recommended) Vogue over Atlas Bucrons. another tire was Flying A dynapols which were less expensive. this was 1958-61 by 62 the hot cheater slicks were Casler,
Rears on my coupe are NOS 6.70x15 Bucrons. Had them about 35yrs with the nubs on them. One day my son said " You`ll be dead and those nubs will still be there..." So we mounted them up and FRYED the nubs clean off of em. Don`t know I`ll go to far with them on the car; but man do they bite! Better close up pic in my album
ESSO, ENCO, adn many other brand names were used by Standard Oil throughout the world. They decided to change to a single name for better name recognition and held a contest to choose the new name. EXXON was chosen because it had no problems with foreign translation and the double X which was very distinctive.
Atlas was a joint venture in the TBA (Tires Batteries and Accessories) market between: Standard Oil of New Jersey (Esso,Enco,Exxon), Standard Oil Incorporated (Kyso), Standard Oil Company of Indiana (Standard, Utoco, Standard Oil Co of Nebraska, Pan-Am, American, Amoco), Standard Oil Company of California (Standard Stations Incorporated, Standard Oil, Chevron), and Standard Oil Company of Ohio (Sohio). They were all part of the Standard Oil Trust that the government broke up in 1911. Like others have said they stuck like glue but didn't last long. I remember some old timers saying they were cheap enough that they price per mile worked out about the same as higher priced premium tires. I knew some dirt track guys that would get worn out Bucrons from the gas stations and groove them with a pocket knife.
George Great Great website. It sure brought back memories. The sad part is rodders younger then us never got to experience the early sixties. To me it was the greatest years of hot rodding. It was truly like American Graffiti, drag strips, cruising, looking for hide and street racing..
I worked at an Esso station in the sixties. A few customers who put them on their cars came back to complain about only getting 5 to 10 thousand miles. <script type="text/html" id="overlay_tmpl"> </script>
Until M&H came out with their 7-inch wide Super Stock tire, the tires of choice in the early '60's were either the Atlas Bucron's or the Vogue tires. Both had soft compound treads. I got slightly better results with the Vogue tires but they were more expensive, and only available with white side walls.
All of V8 tri fives plus some others into '61 tried to get these. Only the "rich kids" could afford new ones. There was a tire warehouse in Houston for defective tires, had 100 thousand or so. We'd search like hell for bucrons, when we found 'em we paid 8-10 apiece, big bucks for lawn mower kids. ----and they made you a winner. cooger
George, I didn't forget the girls of the sixties. Please read my post again. We spent a lot of time looking for hide which = girls. Gary
10-4 on that, Gary. I had never heard about the "hide" deal, must have been a KY thing. I'm from CA, we just called it "pussy" out here, lol. I'm 74 years old and I've had alot of cars and alot of pussy, and I can tell ya that pussy is ALOT more expensive...
The original "Cheater Slick". If you had the HP to spin them, you had to look in the rearview mirror for the black marks, because they made no noise Thanks hoop98. Great photo.
Georgeklass, What a great collection website. Brings back memories as I was into drag racing in the 60s and seeing Dyno Don, Arnie Beswick, Socks and Martin and others. I scrounched a handfull of 409 rockers one time from Dyno Don, after I pulled the bottoms out of a couple of my 409 rockers at Kinston NC. He had a draw full.
in 1963 i had a 62 ss 409 4 speed. i run the Atlas Bucron tires, they made about 3 revs and hang on. i loved them. i bought them at Standard oil stations. wish i had that car today. in 1965 i had Frank (fab32) build me a 409-425hp i put a set on that but my kids started to arrive and had to get out of the sport. you know how that goes. 8-ball
My father worked in a esso station in 62-63 they sold bucrons. By then www tires was out of fashion in Sweden so they sold them cheaper and mounted the ww on the inside
"Enco" was a West Coast wing of Standard of New Jersey in 1964, which I think WAS ESSO. (ENCO was coined for 'Energy Company', ergo, 'ENCO'.) Its actual parent company was Humble Oil, Texas/Oklahoma... Our 3 reps (one right after the other, they didn't last long!) said 'ENCO' was only a temporary licensed name to get the West Coast products moving. 55 dude is right...in 3 years it was EXXON. ENCO's promotional mgmt dinners were second to NONE! Two of them were held at Jack London Square, I still remember that steak. Thicker than the tread on a new Plycron Cushionaire! (Company men knew the products...)
in my area bucrons were getting hard to find by late 1961---i thought easy was the term for girls in california---hides pretty era correct other places...
Wow an old thread brought back to life that is actually interesting. In the early 70's they were already out of production but the central Texas Dirt track racers hunted them down in the tire piles at tire stores and wrecking yards and they were the tire of choice for many dirt track classes then. They did hook up good though.
I worked in an Esso station in the early 70's- after school job. The mechanic was the son of the owner(also a mechanic). He had served in the marines for 7 years, would have stayed in but his father got sick and he came home to keep the business running. When he got out of the service he bought a 58 vette with a 283/dual quads. When his father got well he took a drive from CT to Florida with the vette. He told me about street racing another vette in Florida and getting beat. He said it was cause the other vette had the bucron tires and he had put on harder tired for the trip. It was the first time I ever heard of tires having different compounds.
By the way, 'Plycrons' were a harder compound. On dirt they were used for longer races on a sandy type soil/clay.
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