When we left Part 2 in 1942, whitewall tires were slowly starting to fade from manufacturers’ ads as part of the buildup to World War II. For today’s installment, we finally get to the good stuff, as we ply (no pun intended) the golden age of the whitewall tire.
The immediate end of World War II saw the United States at a critical junction in many areas, but we will focus specifically here on tires (obviously). Were whitewall tires just a passing pre-war fad whose time had passed? Or was it a look that would continue post-war? Surprisingly, the answer wasn’t obvious or unanimous.
As we’ve previously mentioned, automotive brochures weren’t just for selling. These were manufacturers’ efforts to present the definitive and best representation of their products, and to the degree possible, influence the tastes of buyers and automotive styling trends. Much effort is expended by marketers to ensure that their cars are presented in the best colors and from the best angles. This even carries down to the tires the cars are wearing.
1946 Cadillac brochure – no whitewall tires to be seen
In 1946, it was pretty clear that GM thought whitewalls were a fad that had played out. Of GM’s five divisions, only Buick featured whitewall tires in their brochures that year. And you could argue that post-war rubber shortages may have had something to do with this, but these are illustrations, which unlike photos are not subject to supply limitations.
1947 Lincoln brochure
It was a pretty similar story over at Chrysler, Ford Motor Company, Studebaker, and Packard – the vast majority of their vehicles in their 1946 and 1947 marketing materials were depicted with blackwall tires. It seemed that maybe whitewall tires were a pre-war fad that had passed.
But whitewall tires were not going down without a fight. Whitewall depiction started to rise dramatically in 1948, with Studebaker featuring most of their new postwar models wearing them. By 1949, virtually every domestic brand was portraying nearly 100% of their vehicles with whitewall tires in their marketing materials. This doesn’t mean that every car was sold with whitewall tires – many, if not most were surely still being delivered with blackwalls, but in terms of how manufacturers thought their cars were best represented in their ads, the pendulum had certainly swung back to whitewalls.
1949 Ford ad
It is not hard to see why: The rise of Whitewall tires post-war tracks closely with the rise of chrome trim on cars, a trend that would continue throughout the ’50s. After all, what are white sidewalls but chrome for your tires? Maybe it is just how we are used to seeing them now, but there is something about the new chrome-laden postwar designs that look “right” with Whitewall tires (and look off with blackwalls).
1952 Chevrolet brochure
The one curious holdout was Chevrolet. As late as 1952 (long after Ford and Plymouth were featuring almost all their cars with whitewall tires), Chevy was still showing most of their vehicles in their brochures (except sometimes for the Bel Air) wearing blackwall tires. After 1953, Luxury and mid-level brands typically showed all their cars in whitewall tires, while low-cost brands showed only their least expensive models in blackwalls, a pattern that the industry would settle into for the next several decades.
Narrow Stripe Whitewall Tires
The next innovation in whitewall tires would come in the late 1950s, with the introduction of white stripe tires, with the white section occupying just the middle of the sidewall, rather than the entire sidewall.
1962 is regarded as the year the industry changed over from white sidewall tires to white striped tires. While this is generally true, the switchover didn’t happen all at once.
1958 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham
The 1957-58 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham is generally recognized as the first vehicle to ship with white stripe sidewall tires, featuring a 1″ white stripe. These tires were specified by Cadillac exclusively for the E-B to reduce the perceived height and bulk of the car, which I think it quite effectively does (The rest of the Cadillac lineup stuck with regular 2 3/4″ whitewalls).
1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz
With the discontinuation of the Eldorado Brougham in 1959, the Eldorado Biarritz became Cadillac’s standard bearer, and the only Cadillac to be equipped with 1″ whitewalls.
1960 Corvair Monza
Like all styling trends, what starts out upmarket eventually trickles down to lower models. So it was with narrow strip whitewall tires. By 1960, the had started to spread beyond Cadillac. While most of the 1960 Chevrolet Corvair ads were pictured with either wide whitewall tires or blackwalls, a few (like the Corvair Monza above) were starting to be pictured with narrow 7/8″ stripe whitewall tires.
1960 Valiant ad
The 1960 Valiant could also be spotted with narrow stripe whitewall tires as well. That Detroit’s compacts started getting narrow stripe whitewall tires before the full-sized models makes sense: Wide whitewall tires look especially bulky and awkward on smaller cars.
1961 Buick Skylark
By 1961, GM’s new “senior compacts” were also sometimes (although not always) being shown with narrow stripe whitewalls, as shown above.
1962 Imperial brochure page
As most of us know, 1962 was the year that the whitewall stripe hit the mainstream. This year virtually every car for every manufacturer was now sporting the newly fashionable tires. I still have no idea how so many manufacturers coordinated such a change all at the same time, but this wouldn’t be the last time this happened.
1962 Rabler brochure page
Heck, even Rambler got the memo in 1962.
1962 Studebaker ad
Yet somehow poor Studebaker missed the meeting where everyone else decided to use narrow stripe whitewall tires. They alone were still showing cars with 2 3/4″ wide whitewall tires in their 1962 ads and brochures. They would make the switch the following year, in 1963.
1962 Ford ad with wide whitewall tires.
Virtually every 1962 car ad featured 1″ whitewall tires. However, if you look hard enough (like I did), you can still find a few straggler 1962 ads with wide whitewall tires, like the 1962 Ford ad above.
As the 1960s dawned, rapid changes were in store for the humble whitewall tire. Read on in Part 4.
Full Series
Automotive History – The History of Whitewall Tires, Part 1: The Teens and Twenties
Automotive History – The History of Whitewall Tires, Part 2: 1920s and 1930s
Automotive History – The History of Whitewall Tires, Part 4: 1964 through 1969 – The Wild ’60s
Automotive History – The History of Whitewall Tires, Part 5: 1970s through 1990s – The Long Goodbye
I got 1″ whitewalls for the 1984 Mercedes 190E from my wife and they look good on the car.
I have wide whites on my 1960 corvette (Diamond Backs) and narrow whites on my 1970 Chevelle Malibu (Hankooks). Both cars are stock and riding on original size tires and wheels (not a big fan of larger wheels on older cars). You can get cheaper wide whites, but the DBs are much better riding than the Cokers I replaced (the Cokers are just as pretty though). I like the look of solid black walls on a hot rod C1 corvette.
The Hankooks are great tires – look right and drive well. I’m pretty good at replacing tires every six years, regardless of how they look. I’m not interested in dealing with a blowout.
Keep it coming! This is a terrific series of articles. Tinted glass was another item that we never saw much of in brochures in The United States. However, the Canadian Ford brochure for 1954 features tinted glass on all models except for the Mainline. So, different nation, different marketing.
In `61, most full-size cars came with the 2 3/4″ whitewalls which I think look great. It’s when those same whitewalls are found on much newer cars that they look rediculous. The `62 Ford ad above is one I believe was probably photographed during the spring of `61 when the `62 designs were finalized & narrow-band whitewalls weren’t mainstream yet.
Sometimes, you can guage the year or period a car was photographed simply by the whitewalls.
That ’62 Ford also appears to have ’61 wheel covers.
Wide whitewalls did a great job of accessorizing and complimenting, the excessive styling of this time period. At least from the car maker’s sales POV.
The last car I ever put white striped tires on was my ’88 T-Bird (The 5.0LX, not the Turbo Coupe). I only did it once and regretted the decision as soon as they brought the car out to me. I got teased the whole time I had those tires on the car, as by the early nineties, they were falling out of fashion on cars with actual aluminum wheels and not steelies with wheel covers. The one pictured below is just like my car and how it normally looked with its black wall tires.
The last car that I ever owned with wheel covers and not aluminum rims was my ’83 T-Bird. I always put white stripes on that car. Since it was a base model 3.8 with the standard stamped wheel covers and 14 inch steel wheels, white stripes were a must to keep the sidewalls of the 75 profile tires from looking too tall. I think that this may’ve been the styling purpose of white striped tires, actually.
Back in the day, I usually got the standard looking 1″ stripes, but one time I broughamed it up a little bit with the purchase of a set of Dunlop Elites. These had a wider stripe and it set the car off nicely. My normal go to on that car was the Pirelli P77 at the time. These may’ve had a slightly wider stripe than standard, but the tires had all kinds of grip. That said, they wore out fairly fast. I was in my twenties then and tended to drive a little too fast on Northern Baltimore County’s curvy roads. Ask our founder Paul about that one.
Foxes were a lot of fun to toss around, even a T-Bird with the right tires. 😉
Interesting series, Tom… I’m really enjoying it!
Thanks much for gathering all this info for us—I could only have roughly guessed the dates, marques, measurements, and so on. I understand perfectly about cars that did/didn’t “look right” with/without them, and how perceptions change!
A tiny, sidelight part of the story is the homebrew options: the add-on whitewalls (I’m sure J.C. Whitney catalog had them forever) and the paint:
I had a ’73 Ford Pinto with the white stripe inserts. Came that way when I purchased it. Say what you want about the car (mine was very reliable except premature rust). Those inserts leaked like a sieve. After tries by a local tire shop I had them removed. Problem solved.
Nice, all of these .
I especially like the 1962 Ford Hardtop Sedan.
I too am a Diamond Back Classic WWW tire buyer and long term user .
No regrets, not one .
-Nate
I once saw what had to be the world’s worst Andy Griffith tribute car. Among many other incorrect details, it had whitewall tires. Someone didn’t even watch the show, let alone do the research to find out police and taxi fleets never ordered whitewalls.
IIRC, as a kid my first glimpse of the new narrower whitewalls was when my copy of the June 1961 Motor Trend appeared in our mailbox with the 61 Impala SS on the cover. I thought they were terrific.
Great series of articles! Thanks!
I think we skipped one step – it was 1957 when at least most of the industry moved from the 3 1/2 (or so) inch whitewall to the mid-thickness 2 3/4 inch version. That was a short-term phenomenon that lasted only from 1957 to 1961 for most US cars. This is the size that modern owners of 1957-61 cars mess up, with so many restored cars sporting whitewalls of either the older, wider kind or the newer, narrower one.
As for the end of WWII, I had read in multiple sources over the years that whitewall tires were all but unavailable for the first year or two after the war. Chrysler offered thick white trim rings for their wheels, which were a kinda-sorta substitute. I could imagine that while the stylists and advertising people wanted to show whitewalls, it would be bad business (if not illegal) to depict cars trimmed in ways that did not exist in dealer showrooms.
I think the whitewall shortage (either actual or feared) reappeared during the Korean conflict, and quite a few Mopar brochures were done in 1952 that showed high-end Chryslers in black sidewall tires.
I will correct myself – a page at Coker Tire states, in part, that after years of 3+ inch whitewalls: “Around 1954 through 1956, you could expect to see whitewalls from 2-1/2 to 2-11/16 inches on American cars. Then, 1957 through 1961 saw another change with whitewalls ranging from 2-1/4 to 2-1/2 inches. Finally, the big change happened in 1962, when most American automotive manufacturers made the switch to 1 inch whitewalls.”
JPC – You are correct. I tried to keep this piece brief (I originally envisioned it as a three-parter, then four, before finally expanding to five parts). In order to hit all the high points, I had to “fly over” some of the minor whitewall changes of the 1950s.
It’s true that whitewall tires were unavailable during and after WWII, and that’s because their production was banned by the US government.
I remembered reading about that, and was able to find a source detailing the rationale and also the date the ban was lifted. The Akron, Ohio newspaper article below is from April, 1947, and that’s when the Rubber Division of the US Civilian Production Administration lifted its ban on whitewall tires, which had been in place since just after the Pearl Harbor attack. They were banned because they used more resources than blackwall tires.
I wonder if this wartime ban (and its 1947 lifting) contributed to the sudden rise in popularity of whitewalls? For example, if WWII hadn’t interrupted, would the whitewall fashion statement have faded away… but instead people rushed to get what had previously be unobtainable?
That is very interesting – I was unaware that there was a formal whitewall tire ban, and that it extended all the way into 1947. The next time I revise this piece I will incorporate some of this information.
I think regardless of how history played out, whitewall tires were inevitable in the 1950s. The “chrome for your tires” look fits in with the chrome-laden cars of that era.
As I recall, along in the late ’50s & into the ’70s the only cars with black walls were cops, government vehicles, & the cheesiest bottom line of the “low priced three”. Remember port-a-walls? Upgrade your status, & drive your tire installer nuts.
This is not really about whitewalls, but about colours in tires. In 1975 I bought winter tires for my Alfa Berlina in Toronto. I do not remember the brand but I think it was Scandinavian. What was interesting was the tread was blue, not black. This was before the days of Blizzak, but the blue was supposedly due to the rubber formulation. An Alfa Berlina will never be a great snow car, but as I remember they were decent winter tires for the time, but the blue tread was distinctive.
Answered by PDXElectric in a post on the next installment of this article…..
The strangest tires I’ve ever seen were 1970’s Metzeler Blue Blizzards. An early studless snow tire, their tread was a dark blue. They were rare, perhaps too radical or possibly they did not work as well as advertised, but they were certainly noticeable.
Always found it peculiar when someone would order a new car with whitewalls, but no wheel covers – and, vice versa. Recall that a neighbor had a nice new 1963 Impala with full wheel covers and black walls. I mentioned that it would really look sharp with whitewalls. He said he didn’t like white walls as they were a pain to keep clean. Guess that made some sense, but I have no idea why someone would order the whitewalls and skip the wheel covers.
VARIATIONS on White Wall Tires
1) White inner metal rings put on over small hub caps
Mostly on 1940s cars
Looked like white walls from distance
2) White Rubber Ring on between tire and rims
Gave very wide wall look
Best on 16 inch tires
3 ) White walls on both side of tire
Tried in early 1930s – failed
4) Colored tire walls
again in 1930s and a failure
Do know any other variations ?
And now black wheels are the in thing . YUK !!!
Agree 100%
I really enjoy this series and look forward to part 4. I grew up in the 1950s-60s cleaning family, and my, autos that had whitewall tires. Cleaning with Brillo Pads or ‘409’, or both.
I could be wrong but perhaps a pivotal year was 1961 switching from full whitewalls to thin whitewalls mid-production year. Early illustrations of some 1961 models (done in 1960) show wider whitewalls on the up-coming models but by mid-year 1961 production you see narrow whitewalls. If you ordered an early production 1961 Chevy in 1960 you could get full whitewalls, whereas if you ordered a late production 1961 Chevy you got thin whitewalls. Same with many other auto brands.
A peeve of mine is seeing classic autos for sale, or in movies with classic autos, showing incorrect whitewall tires.
Judith, I agree with you black tires and black wheels…YUK. I lived in Canada for 18 happy years before retiring and moving back to the US, and a warmer State. Black tires and black wheels only remind me of 5-6 months of winter and cars with cheap black wheels and black winter snow tires.