I’ve mentioned before that there are five or six beat up E30 convertibles within about a mile of my apartment near Indiana University; well, another school year’s brought the number up to about eight or nine. And while this white convertible was photographed in New York by LeSabreToothTiger (formerly WillRubano), it has the same exact aftermarket wheels I’ve seen on two or three of the BMW ragtops I’ve mentioned. Cheap looking, aren’t they? But apparently popular, hopefully they’re at least lighter than stock.
It was always American Racing directionals similar to these which got the stink eye from me as a kid. More often than not seen with a machined steel finish, they graced the walls of many a Sears Auto Center and were the only entertainment (aside from daytime TV and days-old Maxwell House) available to five-year-old me while my mother had her Accord’s brakes or exhaust replaced for the umpteenth time. I felt they were ugly even then, but the company is still around today, making similar wheels.
These Borbet Type Hs became somewhat of a scourge as the ’90s wore on. And though I’ve never seen them on a 6-series before, this beat-up E24 does a great job of showing how generic and cheap they often look. They probably provided a way out of TRX tire hell for this car, but more often than not, they graced many a dealer-embellished 96/97-era Toyota (the sort adorned with spoilers, gold badging and glue-on wood interior trim) or special edition Mk3 VW. It’s hard to have positive associations with this design.
With wheels and tires getting ever larger, easy replacement of factory-spec rolling stock might be less common than it was fifteen years ago, but that will likely increase the proportion of cheap and tacky items chosen over quality pieces. And I know is that I’ll die happy if I never again have to see “Diablo” rims like the one pictured above. So what say you, readers? What aftermarket wheels do you most commonly see marring a nice classic design?
I knew they were American Racing somethings..but these are the WORST of American Racing’s terrible wheels. I hate these with a passion.
Ew….. Who would look at those on shelf and actually say “I think I am going to sink a few hundred bucks into those”?
Yup, these are AWFUL.
That’s what Grandpa puts on his Ranger to make it look “snazzy”. Along with a vertical tinted plastic bug shield, stick-on “vent-visors”, and extruded aluminum running boards.
Bonus points for whitewalls.
Maybe NOW Grampa does. But when these were ‘fresh’ they were all over shortbed pickups, Jeep Wranglers and even the occasional muscle car. As a a 5 time Wrangler owner, if I had a nickel for every facepalm! In those days I was rolling a ’95 Wrangler… I picked out chromed reproduction Corvette rally wheels for it. Now THAT got a lot of questions and puzzled looks! ARE still makes them, I believe.
You won’t believe how common these are: on Tahoes, Wranglers, Rangers, and Corollas. People in California have 0 taste.
How about all of them?
+1
Ditto.
If choosing between these yes they are all horrible. I especially hate any “two piece” looking wheel where there are all those screws/bolts holding the pieces together, like in the 2nd and 4th pics.
Even the BBS mesh versions looked bad but the very worst were the cheap ones where the screws were fake. Worst look ever.
I have a soft spot for the gold mesh 2 piece BBS wheels from the 80s, but I’m with you on the bolts/rivets, I’ve actually seen some wheels I found otherwise attractive just totally ruined by those.
What about a Minilite style wheel on a smaller classic?
That could be nice. I think that if you choose a simple design and a very high-quality item, aftermarket rims work very nicely. It’s very much a situation of getting what you pay for (as long as you don’t choose anything garish).
I love Minilites and Panasports. 1st gen Miata alloys make a good, cheap substitute as well:
Disagree! I think most anything concocted in the past 30 years is pretty bad for the most part. But the ‘mag’ style from the 60s and 70s can make most anything look a bazillion times better. Nowadays, a good many of factory wheels are pure garbage too. This aint the days of GM having those sweet rally wheels….
Pretty much. I’ve never replaced the rims on a car, I really don’t see the point unless there is something functionally wrong with the originals. Cars are expensive enough as they are, doesn’t seem much point in wasting money on aftermarket crap that makes you look like some sort of poser or ghetto pimp wannabe.
The worst rims, by far, are the Teddy Bear rims from Ronal.
Damn hard to top that 🙂 While they are not aftermarket rims nothing frosts me more than seeing a 3.2 Carrera or SC with 964 or 993 wheels.
Those are absolute crap. Fuchs mags are all you need to know, if you have a Porsche.
Put those wheels on a 928 though and they look fantastic!
I think the 964 Turbo wheels are pretty attractive on older 911s, the bodys are pretty much identical so if it works on one it’ll probably work on another(note I think some 964 wheels are ugly in general), it’s the 993 and later onse where the wheels end up looking out of place since that was the beginning of the 911s decline to jellybean and the wheels were designed for it. They work on the 928 since it too was pretty jellybean itself
Well once the 911 started to jellybean is where theyre less attractive to me anyway. Gimme a late 70s to mid 80s Carrera…bright color, black trim, black center Fuchs…..7″ wide up front, deep steamrollers out back!
I find them amusing, although I can’t think of any car I would put them on.
Do they come in Hello Kitty?
I can’t hate these, they’re too funny!!
Haha, used to be a Mazda 121 (the mid-90s bubble-shape one) in town with those on it.
I was going to reply to slow_joe_crow that these are the only thing they are appropriate for.
Although this is a Ford Ka, these Plastic Teddy Bear Hubcaps were almost standard equipment on the Mazda 121 about 20 years ago (the bowler hat 121 model).
Ha, I see that NZ Skyliner recognized them too !
Never met an aftermarket rim I liked. The picture of the New Yorker makes me want to throw up.
Actually, those are pretty tasteful. The whitewalls need to go, but a polished smoothie style evokes the lead sled look. On a big low car like that, its not a bad look at all. Hell, Id buy the guy a beer just for not slapping dubs on it.
Donks.
When someone put a lot of time and effort into them, I can appreciate “donks”, even if they’re not my style. It’s the thoughtless poorly-fitting Town Fair “rimzzzz” that irk me.
Time and effort dealing the drugs and killing rivals to pay for them?
Generally most three spoke ones look lousy. Overly large and all chrome ones aren’t my favorite either. I wonder what the designer of these was thinking … intentional or not?
Haha, yes, those are…unfortunate.
Wow. That is a really vulgar but so funny of a design. I wonder how many people bought them. And why?
You nailed it – any ugly, cheaply made chrome wheel that tarnishes within six months. Bonus points if the car has only two of them – and steel wheels on the other wheels!
Dishonorable mention, even though it doesn’t quite fit the criteria, is Bentley wheels on old VWs. It was only mildly funny the first time I saw it, and at this point, it’s just as uncreative and tacky as the above wheel category, simply more expensive.
Actually, that one didn’t look so bad. A more typical example…
The wheels are ass, but a 2 door MK2 Jetta….LIKE.
Used to like American Racing Torq Thrusts. Until they started showing up on everything damn thing out there, old, new and everything in-between. Can’t walk through a cruise night or car show now without every other car sporting Torq Thrusts. Ugh…!!
Probably one of my all time favorites. Yes, theyre literally EVERYWHERE these days. But when I first started driving in the early 90s, it was all about 5 stars and teardrops. High offset, directional, that’s where it was. You couldn’t find old school mags anywhere, the best you could do was scrounge them up at swap meets or salvage yards….OR settle for something that was an all-wrong look. I for one am glad to see 5 spoke coke bottles in full swing. Damn near ANYTHING looks badass in them. I recently saw a slate blue Volvo 240 wagon rocking some Torq Thrust D’s…weird, yes but it looked pretty tough.
Im guilty of dumping fuel on the mag fire with my own rig:
Why on earth would anyone pay money to ‘individualise’ their car, by putting the same wheels on it as everyone else has? Doesn’t make sense to me!
But I guess it’s no different to how we all used to wear jeans to be ‘different’!
Conscious individualizing never turns out well. It’s an entirely different thing to have your own approach to something than it is to purposely avoid something just because it’s popular. MoparRocker’s Ram is a perfect example, Even though I’ve seen A LOT of Torq Thrusts I have never once seen a Ram with Torq Thrusts, and I think It looks great AND it stands out!
Thanks, Matt! And you just pointed out the answer to Pete’s question. Ive never, ever EVER seen a 3rd gen ram rolling this style of Torq Thrust. 1st and 2nd gens, yes. Ive seen a few with Torq Thrust M’s, but theyre usually 18 or 19 inches, a lot higher offset, and no step up on the lip. Mine are 17s but theyre literally the same exact proportions as the classic Torq Thrust D’s upsized. 15s wont clear the brakes, and I think 16s wont either so I get questions all the time on that one. These are the only coke bottles under 22″ that I could find which will fit my truck, and truth be told, if I could design any wheel I wanted for my rig then Id wind up right here anyway.
Pete, if you know of any other black Rumble Bee with a 2/4 drop, 17 grey Torq Thrusts and a black rollbar on earth…show it to me! True, in theory, anyone ‘could’ assemble the same rig. But no one else has. I did. And Im not done….
*whoops* that pic is pre-rollbar….
I have a love/hate relationship with the Crager S/S. Love the design but they have to be replaced in a few years because they just don’t last.
Assassyn wheels. I hated them at age 10, and I hate them now. Ever worse, is when they’re slapped on a car that’s not supposed to have any “street cred” attached to it, like say, an FD.
Poor RX7
Wow, those are terrible. Especially on a car like that, deserves much better.
I don’t mind aftermarket or swapped out rims on cars at all; you can improve the looks of many pedestrian autos with a little discretion as to what you replace the stock ones with. That, said, i’ve had a very hard time acclimating to most 3-spoke designs, Adavns especially. The worst fad in the tuner scene if you ask me…
Actually, as tri-spokes go these are REALLY nice for a sport compact. Unlike that ‘molten metal’ abomination up top, these have a nice defined shape. They look high tech and high performance. On a Mazda RX-8, Honda S2K, or a Nissan 350 Z theyd look pretty sharp. But if some knucklehead puts them on a Challenger….NO.
That one you posted actually looks kind of interesting to me, but I’d probably hate how it looks once installed. I could never wrap my head around 3-spokes either, although I’ve warmed up to the Saab 3-spokes with the dark center section and some other abstract designs from the 80s that aren’t real “spokes” anyway.
The ones I hated most were these. Don’t know what they’re called but I Googled “ugly 3-spoke wheels” and it was the first result! These awful things were everywhere in the 90s!!!
…and here’s an example of a weird “3-spoke” that I think looks cool:
Those 3 spokes on the Bimmer aren’t great, but Ive seen worse. MUCH worse. Pretty much anything full chrome and/or with a directional design comes to mind. Those TRX’s on the T-bird are kinda neat. I really liked the tri spokes on the first Nissan Pathfinders and “Hardbody” pickups. They looked very futuristic and high tech in a forged from raw metal, macho kind of look. Very ‘Blade Runner’.
I liked these too. Looked great with those jumbo 31.5 tires.
I think these are the only three-spokes that I have EVER liked.
I pretty much loathe anything over 18″, especially if its that over chromed, overstyled ‘dub’ style. I have a special kind of hate for high offsets with no depth or lip. Just looks weak and impotent. Unfortunately, you cant really push the envelope TOO much on a fwd without destroying the bearings.
Those Diablos are a perfect example of a polished turd. Even on something the ‘go with’ such as an Escalade, its still total ass. But what REALLY sucks is seeing them on classic iron, such as a 442 convertible.
The American Racing Estrella is one wheel that I love to hate. Its their best selling one, mostly because its painfully boring. Granted, if the cheapo plastic wheelcovers on your cammacord are broken or missing, its a quick fix without looking like youre rolling on temporary spares. And on that kind of car, I can see it. But Ive seen those on muscle cars, pickups and 4x4s….BLECH.
As Ive chimed in many a time, my style is the ’60s mag look. Coke bottles are where its at, and I love the ansen style slot mags or the Western turbine wheels too (like on the General Lee). Half moon smoothies look good on some cars, and of course factory rallies of various makes look good when swapped on to rides that don’t normally wear them. Call me a huge fan of the dark center/polished lip look on many wheels too. Makes them look deeper and more aggressive.
LOL, for me it is anything over 17″ and I don’t care what it looks like. All mine have what they came with from the factory except one. That one is wearing one of what I call the classic mags from the late 60’s being a 68. Two have already been mentioned and it is neither one of those.
If I were to put different rims on a car, the’d be OEM. For example, Tyson Hugie’s ’94 Acura Legend with ’04 Acura TL 17″ rims. That’d be the only type of wheel swap I’d do.
I prefer this route as well; I put 7th gen. Toyota Celica GT-S rims on my 6th gen. ’95 GT coupe. +1 inch without drastically changing the thin 5-spoke look.
That’s the route I took with my Cougar as well, 17×9″ 03 Cobra wheels(and brakes)
That looks fantastic!
Funny you should post this question today, as I just ordered a set of custom wheels and tires. There’s a story that goes with them, which I’ll write up soon.
The Chrysler wouldn’t look bad at all with narrow white stripe or redline tires. ’66 is wayyy to new for wide whites.
+1. This is one instance where bigger diameter wheels (19 or 20 inch) would look good, but ONLY if theyre a similar design to the ones shown (smoothies) with a deep lip and plenty of offset.
Donks. Any of them.
Pretty much all of them unless they’re replicas of factory designs.
I think the better question would be by era. 60s and some 70s aftermarket wheels I find very attractive, while 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s wheels are hideous. I think once the car manufacturers started producing alloy wheel designs in house the aftermarket was rendered useless. It became a style over substance “mod” rather than a functional one it had been in the 60s, where heavy steelies were the norm.
Worst looking rims?? Pretty much everything in the Rent-n-Roll store.
Aftermarket repros of the Ford ’12 slot’ steel wheel. We call ’em 12 slots here in Aus.
Don’t know what they were called in the USA.
They look bad enough on Holdens, but worst of all in a 13 inch, 4 stud version on a Celica I once punished my eyeballs with.
You could always tell a cheapo repro because the hole were stamped with parallel
sides, rather than the slight taper the OEM ones had. Here’s an example, in chrome, 13 inch with the incorrectly stamped holes. Oh the horror.
Whatever the wheels are on the otherwise fine ’83 WB Holden Kingswood below. They look similar to Torq Thrusts but the spokes are flatter. They’re beloved of Aussie muscle car owners, but I hate them.
They look great!
Lol, there are so many around on classic Holdens and Falcons, so I did figure it was just me 🙂
Those are either Cragar S/S wheels or some type of imitation. Not a fan of chrome wheels at all, but I like them with the gunmetal or black spokes:
I pretty much hate anything but 5 spoke wheels.The more spokes, the more I hate them. I don’t like really thin spokes either, too “dainty”, I guess.
I hate the giant ones too. 20″ is the absolute biggest I would ever have, and if I could do it for free or really cheaply, I would drop the wheels on my Challenger down to 18″. I see one with 18″ Torque Thrusts and I really like the way it looks. So many old muscle cars have sad looking 18-20″ wheels stuck on them, and it just looks BAD.
Lots of the over-complicated chromed and multi-finished/colored rims like the Diablos pictured above, just ridiculous.
3-spoke wheels look wrong because the are wrong – too much distance between the spokes means the rim has to be thicker section and heavier with more rotational inertia, just what you don’t want.
Fake wire wheels, or real wire wheels on anything newer than the sixties. Snowflakes, or anything else too busy. If it holds mud and is hard to clean I have no time or patience for it. Also fake bead locks on a 4×4, unless you want to look like a poser!
Any great quality rim that some doorknob has rubbed on a curb.
Anything that eliminates a real sidewall is useless. Just try to find nice 15″ rims for a modern car. There is no performance benefit to low pro, and one bad pothole costs you hundreds of dollars.
That said, if I had money to waste my RamCharger would roll and rule on real magnesium bead locks, five spoke please!
As an afterthought the aluminum covered steel wheels on my 99′ Silverado are fugly!
20″-26″ heavily chromed rims on the big American cars from the ’60s and ’70s – a surefire way to ruin classic designs, and some multicolored ones I am seeing all around me these days (rims with centers painted in yellow, purple, blue, pink etc). I am also glad the “spinners” that were all the rage about ten years ago have disappeared.
I despise ANY aftermarket wheels. All of them. OEM wheels are designed for the car, make it look the best, and will preserve the handling characteristics of the car. You go monkeying around with offset and diameter and width and you have destroyed the dynamics of the car. But the idiots that put those monstrosities on their (usually destroyed or lowered) cars don’t care about the car, just impressing their fellow gang members.
Any chrome wheel. Unfortunately for me, both my Ranger (16’s) and Solstice (18’s) came with chrome. And they’re too bloody expensive to replace. I’m not at all crazy about any wheels larger than 17″.
Which is frustrating with my Sedona LX minivan. Being low line, it comes with the fake wheel plastic hubcaps (6 bolt). And the only thing I’ve found on the market is 20″ in either black or chrome.
My personal pet peeve are those wheels popular a few years ago, still found sometimes on Camaros and trucks. Satin finish with some sort of oddly shaped openings, highlighted in black, with an ugly scalloped shape. I can’t find a picture but they always look wretched. Those blobby 3-spoke ARE wheels are bad too.
And it’s funny, there’s an E24 6-series in my neighborhood with either those same Borbet Type H rims, or a copy thereof. It doesn’t get any more generic than that, and it brings down the look of what is otherwise one of my favorite cars.
I’m certainly not against all aftermarket wheels–there are plenty of great ones out there. But there are even more bad ones. And everybody’s got an opinion on all of them…
Konig Theory series rims. Available in any gaudy colour you want, either with painted or brushed metal lips, these things have elicited nothing but disgust from me every time I see them. The “bowed out” beveled spokes make it look like crap, but adding the fake bolts on the outside really make me hate these things. The final blow is that those stupid hubcaps for your busted up Pontiac Grand-Prix look just like these… Gah.
Worst? Cragar Soft 8s.
Best? Ansen Sprint slotted mags. You could slap some of those suckers on a beige Camry/Corolla or Accord/Civic and make it look good.
I went the other way with my ’00 NB, replacing the OEM cast wheels for OEM steelies…