Custom after-market car wheels from American Racing are a great example of how seeing and servicing a niche within an American subculture can evolve into a mainstream business. The subculture we are talking about here is the California car culture that spawned drag racing, funny cars and street racing. The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean and others immortalized the culture in song while pop culture's Dickens, Tom Wolfe, chronicled it in his book The Tangerine Flake Cream Colored Baby. American Racing custom wheels are an object lesson in how to become a cultural icon. Get American Racing SUV 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.
Drag racing is the only racing style to have grown out of urban driving. The original Christmas tree that starts drag races was the standard three color stop light. The quarter mile drag race was not a variation on the track run by quarter horses - it was the distance from one stop light to another.
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.
The Torq Thrust is widely credited with creating the after-market car wheel. The 5-spoke 'tapered parabolic' design kept brakes cooler while the muscular look made the driver look cooler. Suddenly drivers who had no intention to drag race wanted American Racing wheels for their car. With them, even Mom's '57 Bel-Air looked like a muscle car.
The American Racing Torq Thrust wheel was so innovative and so stylish that it crossed over frpm the car fanatic market to mainstream America. Cars that we think of as prime examples of American Iron muscle cars, like the Chevy Bel-Air, were actually targeting the conservative mid-market when they were introduced. But when A set of Torq Thrust American Racing custom wheels were added, the car suddenly became an entirely different animal. Today original the Torq Thrust wheels are highly prized by car collectors.
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.
Appearances by American Racing Vehicle Custom Wheels are common in the movies. Film directors love the powerful look American Racing Car Custom Wheels give to any vehicle and stunt men love the dependability and strength. You can see American Racing custom wheels in the seminal car chase movie Bullit, both Dukes of Hazzard theatrical release movies, The Game, Die Hard With A Vengeance, The Fast and Furious franchise and last summer's blockbuster Transformers.
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