American Racing Custom Wheels Incorporate A Legacy Of Street Racing
Written by man on June 29th, 2009 in Other.
American Racing custom wheels is an object lesson in how to build a great American business. In the early 1950’s a new breed of car enthusiast was busy being born in California. Half the population still lived in the country and underground car racing meant dirt roads and out of the way places. But in the growing metropolises of California, kids looking to test themselves against other drivers created a race that lasted from one traffic light to the next and drag racing was born. Get American Racing Truck Custom Wheels.
After the end of World War II, car hobbyists in southern California and the San Francisco Bay areas began to customize their cars in imaginative ways. A synergy between what came to be known as Funny Car builders and street racers met in the nascent sport of drag race.
Between them, these two invented the mag wheel. Using spoked magnesium wheels with a strength to weight ratio unheard of in any other automobile wheel format, they revolutionized drag racing, first, and American car wheel design second.
Once Romeo began cruising and bruising the local streets and strips in his revolutionary mags, word quickly spread among street racing enthusiasts. Other racers begged Jim and Romeo to make mags for them. Demand was so relentless that it became clear a profitable business could be made designing, manufacturing and selling after-market wheels for street and drag racing and American Racing Equipment was incorporated by Romeo, Jim and design engineer Tom Griffith in 1956. The company was serviced the street racing subculture until the early Sixties, when the famous Torq Thrust wheel took the company mainstream.
In 1962 Griffith created the most famous after-market wheel in automotive history, the Torq Thrust. His parabolic tapered 5-spoke design broke with everything that had gone before and broke with the semi solid wheels that were the main line of pursuit of other automotive wheel design.
American Racing custom wheels have since ascended into that pantheon where a product becomes a symbol for a life style: think Harley, Blackberry or Royal Dolton. Certain American Racing wheels are prized by collectors - most especially early Sixties Torq Thrust. Well, maybe not m-o-s-t especially. The absolute most valuable American Racing wheel is a broken Vector model owned by a collector in Sylmar, California, according to the American Racing website.
Remember The Dukes of Hazzard? Of course you do. Over the course of the series’ 147 episodes and 2 TV movies, Warner Brothers built 340 General Lees and each one was outfitted with American Racing custom wheels - Vectors being the wheel model Warner Brothers used. All but 19 of these ‘69 Chargers were totaled doing stunt jumps. Of the 1284 American Racing Vectors that were on those 319 totaled General Lees, only one Vector did not survive. And yes, it belongs to a collector.
All of the 340 General Lees that Warner Brothers Studio had built during the 7 seasons of The Dukes of Hazzard TV series had Vector wheels. 321 of those vehicles crashed doing the spectacular, pre-CGI stunt jumps the series was famous for. One of those jumps resulted in a broken American Racing Car Custom Wheels wheel. That’s one broken American Racing Custom Wheels out of 1,284 stunt jumps that resulted in a totaled vehicle. They’re the best custom wheels.
