Curbside Quiz: Castoffs From The Peak Hubcap Era – Can You ID Them All?

By
– Posted on July 31, 2024

This year, our summer travel to visit family took us to Iowa where my uncle and cousin have homes. My uncle grew up in the same house he currently lives in. He moved away after school and spent most of his career in Texas, but when his mother passed away, he and my aunt decided to move back to the Iowa home and keep it in the family.

And he’s got quite the collection of wheel covers; more on how he came about them below. Let’s see how many you can identify.

 

The two-story Victorian home was built in the 1890’s. It’s in good condition and hasn’t had any significant alterations since the 60’s. There is no shortage of charm.

The garage is probably not original, but was there prior to the family purchase of the house in the 1950’s.  His father bought the home and supported a family of seven kids on a mailman’s salary, which is impressive even for those simpler times. After driving tanks in WW2 and other postwar jobs, he worked as a mail carrier from the 50’s through the 70’s. As part of his duties, he naturally spent a lot of time driving the roads of the community. On those roads he would occasionally find cast off hubcaps, amassing a significant collection over the years.

The hubcaps are hung from the rafters in the garage, which not only makes a perfectly appropriate decoration but also has a pleasing windchime effect when cross breezes blow through the garage.

His career just happened to coincide with what we’ll call the Peak Hubcap Era, that relatively brief period when the vast majority of cars on the road had full wheel covers. Prior to the 50’s, most cars had small caps covering only the center of the wheel (literally hub caps). In the 1980’s, styled aluminum wheels became increasingly desirable, gradually elbowing out metal wheel covers until the 2000’s, when the only hubcaps found on new cars were cheap plastic ones mimicking aluminum wheels. In the Peak Hubcap Era, every American manufacturer put a lot of effort into making wheel covers that complemented their cars’ styling and positively reflected on the brand. Some where glorious, some where boring, none stayed attached perfectly which is why this collection exists today.

These wheel covers represent what was commonly on the road in that part of the county at that time. So most are not exactly exotic and I was thinking they wouldn’t pose too much challenge for the CC readership to identify. I set out to identify them all myself first and realized maybe they are not all so easy. Brand is pretty simple, but nailing down the exact models and years on some has been a challenge for me. Maybe I’m just hubcap dense and you’ll have an easier time!

He has close to 100. I picked 63 in no particular order. We’ll start with the first 21 and if people like the challenge, I’ll run the rest in two more parts. If you want to play, write the brand, model or models, and year or years for each picture by number on the list and don’t cheat by looking at the other comments. I have a number template at the bottom of the article which you can cut and paste into the comments if that makes it simpler.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes this is a duplicate, but not an exact duplicate. Were they on different models?

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.