Welcome to our special Sunday Edition of Prove Me Wrong! This time it’s a bit different because you’re not actually proving me wrong, you’ll be proving our On-Staff Professional Real Authentic British Auto Designer, Adrian. Adrian is a stylish designer-man full of designer-man opinions, one of which we encountered the other day in the Autopian Corporate Slack Fellowship Hall, when David showed off his now-motile Chevy HHR and the Saab wheels it rode on. That’s when we learned that Adrian does not believe in cross-pollinating OEM cars and wheels.
Just so you understand the full situation, here’s how it played out. It started with this message from David:
David did ask for honest opinions here, so he’s getting what he wanted. I saw the Saab wheels and my first reaction was this:
Because, of course the Saab Inca wheels would be better. They’re always better. At this point, we were all having fun, gleefully enjoying the combination of wheel and car, and then whammo:
Oh shit. Now we’re in trouble. I pressed Adrian for clarification:
Of course, Adrian isn’t wrong that lots of effort, design and engineering-related, goes into the wheels chosen for a given car. No question about that. But does that really mean you can never do some mix-and-matching? Other Autopians chimed in:
I admire S.W. Gossin’s boss-level not-give-a-fuckery on that Stratus Coupé, and I think Adrian is delusional if he thinks Thomas has any clothes from Hugo Boss or Giorgio Armani. I know what we pay him. Seeing how this was going, I decided to stir the turd a bit:
I don’t know, I still think that looks pretty great. Knowing how much this was driving Adrian bonkers, I couldn’t help but remind him of the existence of these:
Yes, the Ronal Teddy Bears. You’d think that would be the trump card against anyone complaining about aftermarket wheels, right?
Anyway, here’s the takeaway: the genuine, professional car designer who works for us says that it’s a sin to put wheels from one carmaker onto another car. While I can understand this purist argument, I’m personally not sure I agree, as my fundamental automotive rule is the same as what Aleister Crowley proposed for his Thelemic brand of sorta-Satanism: Do What Thou Wilt.
If it’s making you happy on your own car, have at it. And, I do think there are some wheels that can work great visually crossing carmaker lines. But I never graduated from the Royal College of Art, of course.
So, let’s put it to the Autopian Collective Mind: is this okay? What do we think of mixing OEM cars and wheels? Tell us! Explain! Prove Adrian wrong!
From an engineering standpoint, using one OEM’s wheels on a different OEM’s vehicle should be fine, as long as:
– the wheels have the same bolt pattern (or the offset is different enough that you can get a bolt-on adapter in there to get to the same bolt pattern)
– similar offset (generally I aim for +/-5mm, but this can vary if you’re adding much wider wheels to avoid hitting the strut, inner fender etc)
– the same hub-centric diameter or larger (and spacer rings are used) as the car that they’re installed on
– don’t hit the brakes or other components
– the tire isn’t much larger or smaller in diameter than OEM (I aim for <3% deviation)
– and aren't too much heavier than the vehicle's OEM wheels
I've gotten 3 or 4 sets of OEM wheels from craigslist/FB marketplace or junkyards to put on other vehicles very economically with a lot of success. Sometimes I'll keep it within the family (Mazdaspeed 3 wheels as winters on the RX-8, mazda6 wheels as summers on the Mazda5), but mixing and matching has worked out well too (Chrysler Sebring wheels on Toyota Celica, Hyundai… something? don't remember… on a previous Mazda5). The key is to make sure that they are OEM wheels, and inspect them closely for cracks, dents, and roll them to look for a wobble or something when buying. Usually you can get 3 or 4 good ones from a set of 4 take-offs in the $200 range, then if you need to replace one just check car-part.com for a match in a junkyard, those are usually only $75 or so.
Aesthetically, to each his own, but Saab has made some nice looking wheels over the years (the ones David chose wouldn't be my top pick, but they aren't bad and if you can get a full, undamaged set from a junkyard, who's to argue?). Those are from one of the later 2007+ 9-3's I think, which shared some parts of the epsilon platform (although Saab apparently reworked it substantially) with the Chevy Malibu, Pontiac G6 etc. Similarly, many bits of the powertrains were shared with other epsilon & delta (like the cobalt, HHR etc) platform vehicles too, so I'd have no concerns about that swap. The wheel diameter looks a maybe an inch or two too large for the HHR styling, but for junkyard wheels/tires there may not have been much of a choice since these used a somewhat odd 5x110mm bolt pattern.
Why would I try to prove your designer wrong when they’re so very, very right? I have a Jeep with a 3″ lift and I still refuse to run anything besides my stock wheels and Rubicon-sized spec tires on it.
A little late to this discussion but how I think of it boils down to
– once the car has left the factory the designers can’t do anything about aftermarket mods (unless you are Ferrari)
– as long as the wheels are a similar spec and from a similarly sized car they should be fine physics wise
As an example, I had Hyundai Sonata wheels as my winter wheels for my G35 for several years. Similar size and weight of car with the same bolt pattern and similar offset. I also ran those wheels on my Tiburon for a season, they were too large but as they are meant for a larger car I wasn’t worried about them not being adequate.
Adrian is wrong, as are all the commentators that changing the wheel spec will ruin your car. It CAN of course ruin your handling, but if you understand what you’re doing it can also make things better.
OEM tires are even worse 90% of the time. Fight me!
This is a bad take. For normal mass market stuff? Yes you’d probably get away with non-spec tires (as long as you stay away from Chinese ditch finders). For anything remotely performance related, stick with the OEM spec (Hubert did a piece on this).
‘If you understand what you’re doing’ is also misguided. If you’re an experienced ride and handling engineer then yes, you know what you’re doing. If you’re not, you don’t (compared to an OEM).
Of course when it comes to the track all bets are off.
Oh man, you guys are gonna hate my take.
I have a 1982 Mercedes W123. I have 50mm spacers on the rear, and the wheels are a 16×8 with a 13mm offset. OEM is a 14×6 with a 30mm offset. I don’t daily it anymore, but it rode just fine.
Jeep BBS-style alloys on a Rover SD1 bolt straight on and look like those classic ones from BMW/VW of the 1980’s but wider.
On the flipside, aside from classic Range Rover and a few Japanese cars, 3-spokes look crap on everything.
If it looks good, it is good.
Also, GM owned Saab, so they are the same OEM. Saab even built on GM platforms. I am fuzzy on what wheel was on what Saab and when, but I think this is a gray area that David can exploit to do whatever he wants and be free fromcriticism from the rest stops of America.
From an aesthetic point, borrowing from Torch’s recent defense of cars as art, once art is put out in the universe, it is open to reimagination and reinterpretation (good or bad). As well, nothing is designed in a vacuum, so it’s not unimaginable that contemporary cars and wheels across OEM’s might share similar influences or concepts that would mean cross-pollination works out just fine. Past that, trying to uphold purity to a single OEM feels like a harder line to define given the constant mergers, collaboration, and parts bin sharing. I don’t even care if it looks good, Bentley Continental wheels on a VW Phaeton is hilarious.
I just put ’08 Mustang fan blades wheels on my ’04 Grand Marquis. Same manufacturer, technically, but vastly different cars. I think it works. For the record, I switched the Mustang logo center caps for plain ones with no logo.
“We spend years getting the wheels right”
Pffffffttt!!!! whaaaa? So how come, you do NOT get it right in 99% of cases?
All modern-ish OEM wheel designs follow the same playbook in terms of colors and shapes, and the only company that tries to make something different is the DS… Hell, you now get new cars with 21″ (twenty fucken one!!) wheels, and somehow the designers manage to make them look like crap:
Offence number one – black paint! Arghhhh, I’m melting every time I see a RAV4 or actually anything else with black wheels; OEM black rims should be prohibited by law, with maybe a little loophole for OEM murdered out package… some companies call it “BLACK LINE” or some idiotic “MIDNIGHT SERIES”, and I couldn’t care less, but hey, some people like their cars like coffee – black and bitter.
Offense number one and a half – black wheels with chromey accents. Oh, please, just stop, it only makes it worse (looking at you, Audi, and even more at Renault – shivers).
Offense number two – size; I grew up in an era when 19″ was the largest wheel you could and should install on a modded car (well, maybe apart from donks, but that’s another story). And shazzam now you can (scratch that – you HAVE TO) buy a, oh I don’t know, BMW i3 (a small ugly city car) with standard 19 inch wheels. WHY? Does it have eight-piston calipers? The wheels doesn’t even look good and is just awfully expensive to get winter tires or smaller wheels as a replacement. And to add insult to injury – 19 inch painted BLACK. So, you know, to make them look like 16″s.
Offense number three – flat designs; what happened to cool dished rims? Yeah, I know, aero and shit, but come on, we’re talking style here!
So, yeah, vast majority of OEM wheels are just boring or plain ugly – being limited to such selection is just wrong.
The i3 has big wheels, but they are extremely narrow. This was done to reduce the contact patch and to lower rolling and aero resistance.
My dislike of black wheels is well documented, but customers do like them.
It always bumps me when I recognize the wheels from another car. Like Firebird wheels on a Camaro… even if they might otherwise look great on a given car, they just don’t belong there. Otherwise do what you will, but make the logos match, or get rid of them.
Aftermarket wheels, 97% of them look like poo, but the perfect set can make a car!
As for offsets, just buy/use wheels with the correct offset. Kind of like how you buy clothes that fit, you know, you.
I think I’ll be buying some 17″ Neuspeed wheels for my MK7 Golf soon. I’m tired of the rough ride from my 18’s, even though the factory wheels look great. Choosing Neuspeed RSE05 because they’re beautiful, and they fit a factory VW center cap.
swapping rims is acceptable if and only if the suspension engineer built the car’s corners with those rims in mind. otherwise you have destroyed the car’s suspension and will probably crash.
(or a same-spec wheel (offset, bolt pattern, the works. I’m no purist, but you’re asking for trouble if you mess with suspension geometry)
Just don’t tell the mfgs, since they put wheels with different offsets on cars from the factory depending on the size of the wheel.
Well your no fun
Tell me you lease boring garbage without telling me you lease boring garbage
Not okay. Different rims mess with the offset and offset is a critical parameter in suspension design. In another life I studied suspension design and the first thing I learned was to not mess with rim offset. (also the HHR is fugly as all hell and does disrespect to those beautiful saab rims).
even a difference of something like 10mm will mangle the geometry. suspension is really sensitive, which is why rims are not interchangeable.
the reason being is that suspension design relies on reliable arcs being laid out as the suspension travels. extending the lever arm changes basically every single parameter including:
the moment of inertia
the mass of the wishbone
the trajectory of the wishbone
probably a few other parameters I cannot think of right now, too
in a nutshell, its a recipe for disaster when the engineers have METICULOUSLY tested the design with the OEM-spec rim offset
Counterpoint: theory is theory, but a mountain of empirical evidence says that it’s fine. People mess with wheel offset all the time and are perfectly happy with the results. Maintaining a stock ride is not everyone’s priority—I mean, I run aftermarket coilovers in the Miata (with a lower ride height, different camber, and taller rear shock mounts, oh my!) and prefer them greatly over the ones Mazda used. There is no epidemic of people crashing their cars because they changed their wheel offset +/- 10mm, and most people will never even notice the difference in ride quality. Even among those who do, some people think it’s worth it for the looks, and that’s fine.
People screw with suspension geometry all the time. One should be aware that handling and ride quality will change, and that big changes are likely to be bad for the car unless thought and care are put into the effort, but generally speaking it’s no big deal.
My drift competition Miata had 25mm spacers and then a whole range of non-OEM wheels (BMW, Honda, Lotus, and loads of after market wheels) in a range of wrong offsets.
It worked on the track OK, and didn’t cause any noticeable problems on the road, and I daily drove that thing for years. I’ve certainly driven standard cars with worse steering.
I’d drive it without the spacers occasionally, and other than the tires rubbing at full lock (modified rack) and it fitting on my trailer, I couldn’t say I’d have noticed the difference.
At the same time I was drifting the Miata I was competing in sprints in my standard Elise, so it’s not like doing skids in beat up cars is all I know.
Different wheels do not neccessarily mess with the offset but can. However a small change in offset is not a big deal and mfgs do it themselves. For example on the Mustang Ford put 16″ wheels on the base 6cyl cars that used a 39mm offset but the optional 18″ along with many of the 17″ wheels have a 50mm offset. So yeah as long as they don’t cause clearance issues a small difference in offset isn’t going to cause a problem.
It’s ok. Even the Gucci crowd will mix and match accent items. As far as functionality goes, sometimes another manufacturer just does things better. And sometimes parts are shared between makers, with only a badge to tell you which is which.
There was a senior female designer wear I worked who turned up one day looking like she’d just run through the Gucci store grabbing stuff off the rails at random. No thought as to whether it looked good or not, just assuming because it was all Gucci it automatically looked stylish.
It did not. You have consider what works together.
I disagree. Sometimes OEMs don’t sell steel wheels for a specific vehicle, and I much prefer steel wheels to alloy wheels.
Steel wheels belong anywhere they fit, as long as you don’t care what your car looks like.
I agree with the first bit.
I just about lost my shit when I got to the part with those bear wheels. LMFAO!!! My wife looked at me funny.
So, Mr. Designer, what’s your take on the Audi RS2’s wheels then? What if an OEM puts another OEM’s wheels on? How about Porsche brakes on an Audi? (Yes, I know, same parent company, etc, etc. – but not quite in the days of the RS2.)
brakes are not rims. brakes don’t mess with your suspension geometry.
Adrian’s input is correct and his argument should win.
Alas, I also once put Lexus SC430 wheels (the big DISH and non-chrome; I’m not a total heathen) on a mkVII GTI because it looks delicious.
mkVI. damnit…
More OEM wheels are variations of the same kind of ugly than aren’t, but they’re usually tough and can be cheap from a JY, so if one finds something they like, I say have at it (but maybe lose any other-branded center caps). Putting myself in a designer’s designer shoes, I imagine most wheel creation would go something like: designer gets assignment to design wheels for eunuchmobile they couldn’t give less of a shit about because it’s nothing like the crushed dreams of the supercars or innovative new forms they fantasized doing when they decided to pursue their career and puts it off. Very early morning before the deadline, they recall the assignment while trying to think of an exit from the bedroom of the most recent one-night-stand after the craft beer/small batch single malt goggles wear off and they’re left frightened by the inclinations of their lizard brain when it is not held in check by the higher brain. Leaping upright in bed and receiving a shot of hangover pain in return, they wince and exclaim something about remembering an emergency job. Mumbling about capturing the essence of dynamism and fluidity of motion to a groggy and confused partner who had no intention of convincing them to stay, they roll onto the floor to gather their clothes and, on their way to the Waffle House for hangover-cure breakfast, they stumble into a next door Pep Boys with their phone camera snapping away to gather the inspiration matching their enthusiasm for the job at hand. Later that day, they submit variations of over-styled 5-spoke black wheels with machined faces, three of which make it to production.
Stop stalking me.
This is probably the best article here yet.
Your pro car designer is wrong and his argument about vehicle wheels built for each car and only that car is pretty weak. I would probably look for another one.
90s Ford F series aluminum Alcoa wheels look great on just about any other truck Chevy or Dodge. Chevy truck aluminum “kidney” wheels are also a good looking wheel that are right at home on a dodge truck
Many cars come with generic steelies, many cars share the same everything about off set, bolt pattern, size.
Sorry but the guy sounds real fun at party’s…
With the amount of platform sharing between manufacturers, swapping wheels over is pretty common if you are familiar with what cars are using what platform. Here in Australia I have seen a Volvo S40 with Focus XR5 wheels and it looked pretty good. Seen Range Rover wheels on a V70 too.
It does need to look decent though. Wheels can compliment or completely detract from the design. But as another commenter stated, I think it looks best when the donor logo is removed or replaced with the recipients badge instead. OEM wheels also have the advantage of not looking ‘tacky’ like some aftermarket wheels can, especially the finish of them.
Are we 100% sure they’re Saab wheels? Because they look almost exactly like the factory rims on my 2011 Durango R/T. Not that that’s any better for the argument at hand lol
absolutely acceptable.
but i might be biased as i come from the vw world.
i personaly have run mercedes wheels before and currently have audis as winter wheels.
i have friends have or had those and bentley, porsche, lamborghini, alfa romeo, srt4, land rover and jeep wheels
lotta great oem options that you can make fit your car
I remember seeing a base model golf with Audi R8 wheels. It looked pretty good and probably annoyed some folks.
you’re basically signaling to anyone who sees your car that you’re a junkyard dog
BFD.
a pile of oily Jeep parts in pain view
I think that’s the view from his neighbors’ yards. And those parts are more likely rusty than oily.
And that should have been a reply to Ticallion’s comment.
This is no different than aftermarket wheels, but I will throw out one caveat. I think it looks weird to have the wheels’ OEM’s logo or name still on them. If the name/logo isn’t on the wheels themselves anywhere, and if you can swap in the center caps from your car’s manufacturer, then go right ahead. Otherwise, you’re basically signaling to anyone who sees your car that you’re a junkyard dog.
Granted, David probably always has a pile of oily Jeep parts in pain view, so I may be splitting hairs here.