(first posted 3/9/2016) Following up on our road wheel discussion, let’s consider the wheel cover. Practically extinct today, wheel covers were just as distinct as the cars they adorned throughout the CC era. A step up from the lowly hubcap, they provided a combination of style and branding that reinforced the signals car manufacturers wanted to send about the cars themselves.
Once again, it was Cadillac that got the ball rolling, introducing steel wheels and full wheel covers on their 1938 models. And once again, it took some time for the rest of the industry to catch up, but by the 1950s full wheel covers graced all but the lowest of low-priced cars.
Some were so good, they were arguably better than the cars themselves. One of my favorites, on the 1961 Imperial displays a cool elegance sadly missing in Virgil Exner’s freestanding headlights and compound shark fins.
Others, not so much. Was there ever a meaner wheelcover than the ones introduced on the 1962 Plymouth? It’s as if the designers, having been forced to hack together the disastrous downsized B-body, just gave up. There’s a reason virtually every 62 Fury you see today is wearing dog dishes instead of these.
OK, so my interests, both hot and cold, seem stuck in early 60s Mopars. I’m sure you’ll have many, many more candidates to add, both good and bad.
The aluminum crap covers that came on my ’75 Ford Granada might just rank right up there. Ford was just starting to play with aluminum on mainstream production vehicles. Worked fine as a air filter housing, not so fine as a wheel cover. Pulled over many times to recover one that just flew off.
The “standard” wheel covers used on 1971 Plymouth Satellites, Dusters and Valiants. They look like much cheaper, less attractive versions of the 1962-63 Plymouth wheel covers.
My all time favorite wheel cover is from the 65-66 Impala SS (and would be again used on the 67 Nova SS). Could there be a more fitting cover for such a beautiful car? Notice though in this photo, the forward two have center areas slightly deeper than the ones in the rear? The fronts are 65’s, the rears are 66’s. Most people do not realize there is a difference!
I think GM wheel covers in the 70s looked the classiest.
I also liked the Benz color coordinated covers.
But my favorite was the 1978-83 Fairmont “turbine wheel cover”. They were plastic-but unless I touched them, they looked like alloy wheels!
I believe those were the first “alloy wheel look-alike” wheel covers that did not look cheap or tacky (though it was a cheaper solution than styled alloy wheels).
I always thought the 1957 Plymouth ones were among the best looking.
I always loved the Sport Wheel Covers that Chevy offered on the downsized ’77 Caprice and Impala. My Dad ordered his ’77 Caprice Estate Wagon with them. Unfortunately they liked to fall off, and he ended up with only one left on the car (which I kept hung up in my parent’s garage to this day as a remembrance of that car!) He replaced them with the base wheel covers which didn’t look as nice but never fell off.
These are quite familiar, the ’78 Caprice sedan that graced our family for 15 years wore these. Initially I was not a fan as I never liked covers that tried to look like road wheels. Eventually, I was won over. It helped that the standard Caprice cover in this era wasn’t particularly appealing.
We also has some trouble with flying covers. I lost the two rear covers gunning the car up an ice covered hill behind my high school. My driving notwithstanding, it turns out the wheels we bought to mount snow tires on were not compatible with the somewhat deep dish styling of the covers. My folks obtained a couple of OEM style steelies and all was well.
My personal favorite cover would be hard to pick, there were a lot of great ones. I’ll go with the author on some of the Imperial covers of the ’60s as that had occurred to me before I saw his pick.
These are one of my fav’s also. My aunt had a 1977 Monte Carlo with this style wheel cover, although in the place of the fleur-dis-lis, there was the knight’s crest. And, inevitably, she lost one in the early 80’s. It was replaced with a Caprice version, with the fleur-dis-lis…
Totally forgot they were available on the Monte for one year! Must have been hard to find a replacement if one was lost!
Pontiac’s Custom Finned Wheel Cover was always a great looking cap, too. I loved them on the full-sized cars, especially the Bonneville Brougham of the late 70’s.
Yes, but you had to look quickly before all the plastic fins broke off.
Then they weren’t so great looking..
LOL! I do remember many like that too!
Those fins were actually individual thin painted metal (aluminum?) fins that were each held into the main disc by bent tabs. Those things rattled like nobody’s business, until the vanes got loose and flew off after one too many carwashes. But when they were fresh, they gave off a really cool illusion as they turned.
Makes me wonder if these were pontiac covers on my grandmothers Olds.. I had never seen them listed as an option in the Olds brochures.
That’s a good one!
A good friend’s mom had a ’74 Grand Ville with those covers and I thought they looked pretty cool.
Yes! The earlier versions had a one-piece black PLASTIC “cage” that was melted to the stainless steel cover. Hitting one vane with the pressure washer too hard and the whole cover is junk. But they are beautiful.
’63-’64 Cadillac wheel covers are among my favorites.
You made me think of one of my favorites, the ’62 Cadillac. They did color keyed covers, perhaps the only ones Cadillac did in the ’60s.
Does this put Cadillac ahead of MB for early use of color keyed covers?
No, MB had been doing it at least since 1954.
I think those may be getting down to just “hub-cap”.
I’ve long wondered how those were painted. It’s amazing the paint stayed on, too, because I can’t believe anyone repainted them.
For a nominal fee – and on some models like Fleetwood Brougham and Seville no extra charge – Cadillac offered these beautiful Turbine Vaned Wheel Discs. They really dressed up your Caddy for not much extra over the base hubcaps (which I never was a fan of on late 70’s – early 80’s Caddys, especially the deVilles). And surprisingly they didn’t seem to be ordered that much as I never really saw them too often. When you did, it made that car seem so much classier than one with the base wheel covers. Should have been the standard wheel cover on deVilles as well IMO.
sad that real wheels weren’t an option
And the mid to late 70’s Datsun wheel covers must be the ugliest…
I had the same in mind!
I’m kinda thinking the same about those as the early saab turbo wheels posted in the road wheels topic last week – they match the car perfectly, therefore I’m not that horrified by them
Speaking as a former B-210 owner, I’ll second a “worst” vote on those.
Is the black paint highlighting *gone* or did this year/trim level never have it? Either way, that car’s crying out for some Wats or the classic ’70s five-slots or white wagon wheels.
+1
Those Datsun caps dented easily which made them look even worse.
These always reminded me of honeycombs….. And if a rock flew up and dinged one, who would ever notice? There were so many awkward lines and creases in the design.. Yeah.. terrible.. but highly recognizable…
Agreed. I’d forgotten all about them until you brought it up.
The B-210 ones are copies of the wheels on some supercar I think, but I can’t figure out which one.
Best
+1
+1. Like an alternate version of half moon smoothies. But they HAVE to have the trim rings, or theyre just dogpans on steelies.
Yes, I like this look, but not true wheel covers. The deep wheel offset makes it work. This is almost as good as Chevy “Rally” wheels.
worst. This applies to all wire wheel covers as far as I’m concerned.
Yep! Those aren’t the worst Ive seen, but pretty much all wire wheelcovers scream ‘cheap and no taste’. Real wires on the right car are classy, but hubcap wires reek of 80s era midwest GM cars owned byJerry Lundegaard types.
They can be OK when done right, this was my 87 Olds
But….but….Smithsonian!
What year did Ford finally stop offering wire wheel covers on the Mustang? I know they offered both the wires and the Fairmont turbines after the ’87 facelift. They also offered a rather hideous wire wheel cover on the early MN-12’s that looked even more out of place (especially on the T-Bird)
I think the option was dropped in 1990 or 1991, they’re in the 89 brochure: http://www.lov2xlr8.no/brochures/ford/89m_8.html But not in the 92 Brochure: http://www.lov2xlr8.no/brochures/ford/92mustang.html
They never looked right on the full blown composite jellybean designs especially, that’s for sure.
Mom’s ’72 Skylark had the factory fake wires. They always made noise.
With the advent of plastic wheel covers, most of them looked a bit crap, but Peugeot had several on the 405 & 406 which managed to look as good or better than many manufacturers’ alloy wheels.
I have strong recollections from childhood of Datsun being the kings of the awful wheel cover, especially those ones which looked as if they had taken a good wheel cover and fitted it by bashing it repeatedly with a hammer until it stuck.
Edited to say MG beat me to it on the Datsuns.
I never liked these Ford hubcaps. There was no rhyme or reason to the vehicles they chose to put them on. They came on late 70’s / early 80’s Fiestas, Mustangs, and LTD’s (with a lesser amount of fake lug nuts). Yet they were also used on Ford trucks until the late 90’s. I might have disliked them less if they were limited to certain vehicles.
Here’s the Mustang…
Then late 90’s F-250. Not much had changed to the hubcap.
By the way, not easy to find a pic of an F- 250 with the original hub caps.
I thought those were pretty homely. But then, Ford brought out THIS cheap garbage, making those vaned hubcaps look decent by comparison:
Those aren’t wheel covers on that Mustang (and possibly the Fiesta). Ford made alloy wheels and wheel covers with the same basic design, but IIRC, only the real alloy wheels were used on the cars, and the trucks got the wheel cover version.
I happen to think that the (real) wheels of this design were quite nice too.
Those are known as Ghia wheels in europe. I believe they are alloy wheels, atleast the Taunus and euro Granada had alloy wheels that looked like that.
The “Ghia wheels” were alloys. The Fiesta, Taunus and Granada Ghia models had them in the late seventies. Never saw an Escort or Capri with those rims though, although they were both available as Ghia IIRC.
Not sure if the offset allows the Ghia wheels to fit on Escorts, as the Mk III-V Cortina/Taunus Rostyle wheels wouldn’t fit on my old Mk I Escort without spacers. Turns out Escort Rostyles have a different offset, and yes I found out the hard way…
Back in the 90s I fitted a set of the Ghia wheels to my ’86 Sierra and they looked great, but the offset was such that they only fitted over the calipers if the disc pads were half worn and yes I found out the hard way again…
Now one of my worst. The 1977 Cadillac base wheel cover. Simply looks too cheap for a Caddy. Sorry!
For some reason the Lincoln Mark IV and V base hubcaps looked nice. Maybe it was because they weren’t made of a very thin, cheap material like the Cadillac ones.
One of the best – the optional “Sport” wheelcover on the 1966 big Plymouth. The hub with the fake lugnuts and the vanes were seperate diecastings that bolted onto the stainless disc. These were on the 20K mile 66 Fury III sedan I bought in the 80s. I took them off, cleaned and waxed them and still have them in the garage. They were too nice to go back onto a daily driver.
And was there ever a less inspired design than that on the 1960 Chrysler?
I totally agree!
My dad saved the hubcaps from his 57 Plymouth, they hung in the garage for 20 years after it got scrapped and I always liked them. Here’s Mom and Dad with the Plymouth in 63.
Very cool question! Just off the top of my head, the 1990-1991 Plymouth Laser hubcaps were pretty cool! They always reminded me of a CD.
Conversely, these circa 1991-1993 Dodge Caravan wheel covers always looked horrible to me. Too much solid section without holes.
These Caravan wheel covers were worse. One of the worst ever.
But these from around the same time are very interesting fake alloy wheels, but I don’t think based on any real alloy wheel.
I like the Laser hubcaps as well. I can’t remember if they had a tendency to fly off like those on other Mitsubishi products, though…
This 1990-1993 LeBaron sedan wheel cover
Always liked these on the early Chevy Monza, especially when color-keyed to the car. They’re plastic, but they were a pretty high quality piece, with good detail work. As mentioned earlier about the Caprice/Impala plastic covers, they had a tendency to eject themselves from the vehicle.
Always liked these on the Monza. Especially the color keyed ones.
Some of the best hubcaps were the final spinner caps in ’66 and ’67 before the feds took all the fun away in ’68. My favorites are the spinner caps on the ’67 Chrysler 300, ’67 Thunderbird, and the full size Dodge. Favorite non-spinner cap is the ’67 Fury turbine cap with that intricate 2-piece casting.
But my favorite of the entire CC era is the aforementioned ’61 Imperial Le Baron cap. 3 dimensional, impeccably crafted, a perfect blend of futuristic and formal. Extraordinary.
I really like these!
Is that a 70s Buick? Those were nice. They had some heft, and an unfortunate tendency to fly off in pothole country as I can personally attest.
The photo looks like a ’77-’79 Buick Electra/Park Avenue.
I do believe that is a 75-76 park ave or lesabre
The picture above is from my 1975 Electra but the same wheel covers were available on the 1974 Estate Wagon and standard on the 1974-76 Electra as well as on the on the 1974-76 Riviera (with a different emblem).
There was also a version with the Buick Tri-Shield emblem available on the LeSabre and Estate Wagon in 1977-79 (a fairly rare option). I have one of those with the Tri-Shield emblem too.
Here’s a 1979 LeSabre Limited equipped with these wheel covers, after 1976, they were not available on the Electra or Riviera.
These have always been my favorite, whether they are on a Mustang, Torino, or a F100.
Yep, always liked these. Not garish in the least, unlike many.
I have always thought that early Maverick hubcaps were ugly.
I liked these. But I didn’t like the rest of the car much!
Australian 72-73 XA Fairmont
I’ve always thought the ’65 Ford covers were awful…
Agreed. Plus these things tried running away their car at every opportunity.
These were just about everywhere when I was a little kid and they were so distinctive that it helped make the ’65 Ford one of the first cars I could identify. Perhaps this is why I love this cover.
My love is just a bit odd, I simply hated just about everything that Ford did in the late ’70s and early ’80s that involved 4 lug styling. Dividing a cover into quarters vs. fifths in the ’60s was generally not something a polite designer did, so I can understand your dislike for these.
I have to agree with you. I have always liked these. In fact, when the ’65 Ford was new and I was in high school I considered buying a new set from the Ford dealer for my ’55 Ford. I decided I couldn’t afford them so I settled for Baby Moons.
I can also see why others don’t like them.
These always remind me of the old tv test pattern.
ITT: The most intricately detailed, highest-quality pieces were the most eager to part ways with the car.
Too heavy? Details catch the air? Too much cost put into the design so they cheap out on mounting hardware?
These aren’t half-bad, either:
I always thought the hubcaps on our ’68 F-100 looked classy, but somewhat out-of-place on a pickup truck (pic is not of our truck).
Those look very similar to the ones that were on my Dad’s ’66 Galaxie. I wonder if they are the same cap. The car also had 15 inch wheels.
That out-of-place nature made the flossy Ford pick-ups of the late ’60s really stand out for their car like looks. I loved the Ford time warp with their use of older full-size car covers on later trucks. I believe those are ’66 Ford car covers.
The ’71-’72 car covers took on a life of their own on Ford trucks through the ’70s.
Absolute all-time worst? They were ugly, heavy, expensive, and prone to fly off.
No redeeming qualities at all, unless you liked the look. The first facelift of this ST141 Corona ditched them.
Worst? Easy: the early BMW E34 M5’s “turbine” wheel covers. (There are actually black 5-spoke wheels underneath, much like some 2000s Ford and GM sedans.) Sure, they were supposed to cool the brakes, but holy moly, they look cheap and hideous! Needless to say, they switched to a more attractive design.
(Dis)honorable mentions: wire wheel covers on 1980s compact cars – even Mustangs (who were they fooling?) and any wheel cover that falls off if you look at it the wrong way (1990s Mitsubishi and Nissan products come to mind).
Edit again: maybe the Mustang covers were supposed to be a throwback to the 1960s, but they still looked cheesy and out of place on the Fox.
It sure didn’t help that it made it look like the car had tall whitewalls instead of squat speed-rated tires. I remember seeing b&w shots of prototypes with these on and literally thought that they were base-model steelies with whitewalls to camouflage M5 prototypes.
I didn’t even realize these were hubcaps. I also thought it looked like the car had whitewalls.
Ive never liked hubcaps/wheelcovers by and large. For one thing, mag wheels are SO much better. And its the whole tall and skinny look with no offset or depth that I cant get behind. I always liked the design of these Mustang covers though. They look like theyre aping some kind of actual wheel.
I like those too. My dad bought a ’70 Mach 1 with these back in 1980. He quickly swapped them out for a set of Magnums, however. I remember that all the “lug nuts” on these caps had lug wrench marks on them. These were standard on the ’70 Mach 1 but you don’t see many with these anymore.
Those were my second most favorite, I thought for a very long time those were actual road wheels
In their heyday there were no alloy wheels, then aftermarket ones came out and certain cars like Pontiac Gran Prix’s started getting them. Pretty soon all wheel covers were fake alloys.
I always thought the dog dishes on cheap models in the 50’s-60’s looked awful, and still don’t get it when someone has a collector car with them. Full wheel covers were always far better and made the car look like it wasn’t some horrible stripper.
Mopar salt shakers never did it for me. They had a pretty ugly cap on the Duster around 72-73 too.
These?
I actually like those! Of course I’ve seen dual 1,000 times so of course I would haha
Or these? Both are horrible on the Duster/Demon especially. Too much fender, not enough to fill them out. Either would make nice wall art for the garage though….
Those are them. Thanks.
Look like they came off a Datsun!
I love those! Pure nostalgia for me, perfect for a slant 6 green Scamp or Valiant,
I kinda dig the look of base Chrysler 300s wearing these. Its simple, but dosnt look cheap. These actually have a bit of style going on.
A bit of ironic product (mis)placement going on there!
My grammas ’71 Coronet had these ‘ufo’ looking caps so while they aren’t stylish or pretty…I have a soft spot. Id like to have at least one as garage deco
The ‘Volcano’ cap! My parent’s 1970 Coronet wagon had ’em!
There are at least a dozen very nice wheel covers that I have always liked. Most are “Disk” like in design. Simple and nice reflection of light. I will post one at a time.
1956-7 Lincoln Premier
It’s awesome to go with the interior door handles.
I have never lost a wheel cover in 45 years of some pretty bad cars
and pretty bad driving!
1953-4 Studebaker
The beauty of these caps is that they are so plain that they don’t compete with the perfect lines of the Studebaker coupes. The perfect cap for such a car.
Buddy, you’ve nailed it! Just enough detail with the three short spokes and “gold” center that it has some interest, but not detract from the car.
Weren’t these reused on the Avanti, painted with a mag-wheel-like pattern?
Sort of. They did reuse the basic dies, but added another strike or more to indent the “starfish” pattern into the wheelcovers for the Avanti.
Bingo! Look great on just about anything. I think the ones on the Avanti were modified versions.
1957 Plymouth
’57 Plymouth — spectacular!
That reminds me, I always liked the ’62-63 Plymouth ones the author hates, but I liked the ones on my Sport Fury even better.
Liked the styled steel wheels of the 1970s Buicks!
1958 Dodge
Also looks better on a car.
These were often included as “custom” wheel covers on 1950’s AMT 1/25 scale model kits.
1953 Cadillac
Looks better on a car with wide white walls
53s are good, but I was always partial to the 52 sombreros
1961 Imperial
1975 Ford Elite
1964 Chevy Impala SS
1967 Buick Electra
1961 Cadillac
Especially beautiful with the body-color accent. I’m a sucker for color-keyed covers, which is why the classic Mercedes design in the lead photo also is appealing, but these are fantastic.
1957 Thunderbird
1952 Buick
Wheel cover on car
these are great, I have a set on my 58 buick.
1959 Oldsmobile
These are some of the cleanest design wheel covers ever. There are more, but these are the ones that come to mind.
I agree. The ’59s are really nice. Another one of my favorites, also from Olds, are those found on the ’63 Starfire and ’98s.
Great selections, Bill.