What’s Your Favorite Wheel Design?

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Wheels! They’re such an important part of the car because they’re what makes the car roll. No wheels, no drivey, it’s as simple as that. They’re also a crucial piece of a car’s design. Too big, and a car looks silly, like some kind of doofy joke. Too small, and the car looks differently ridiculous, but ridiculous still. Under normal circumstances, a wheel and tire package should neatly fill the guards, with maybe a little tire poke to the outside if you’re going for an edgy tuner look.

Of course, some cultures go to extremes. Donks ride on gigantic wheels, to the point where they look ridiculous and barely operate as a car anymore. The opposite trend was at one point a thing in the lowrider community, where tiny wheels made the cars similarly undrivable, to say nothing of brake clearances, either.

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Phone dials are an Alfa classic.

But it comes down to more than just mere size. Personally, I’m a big fan of five-spoke wheels. I think they look great on a whole ton of vehicles, from JDM classics to older American cars, too. I used to run a nice set on my Mazda MX-5, which really made it look quite nice.

As an aside, the benefit of the MX-5 is that here are tons of examples online you can use to guide your wheel choice. Research told me that 15-inch wheels were ideal, and guided me towards the right offset to get the look I was going for. You can see my car in the header image.

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I tend to find that vintage cars look better on vintage wheels. I saw a Lada drop-top that looked great on a classic 70s-style spoked design. That car may have come out in the 1990s in Australia, but it looked much older. Thus, the older wheels seemed to work with its general aesthetic.

Similarly, the Holden Hurricane absolutely rocked its unique wheels that were reminiscent of a spinning finned heatsink. Ironically, the lack of ventilation meant they’d probably be terrible for keeping the brakes cool, but they looked like they were high-performance items.

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Maybe your tastes differ from mine. Perhaps you love tri-spokes, or those horrible single-spoke wheels that look as unbalanced as the guy sitting by himself in an empty subway carriage. Or maybe you think the C8 Corvette should have come out with a set of 14-inch Watanabes. And speaking of Corvettes: do salad shooters work on everything? Maybe!

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[Ed Note: You can click that for a whole thread of cars on salad shooters. Stupid “X” link isn’t embedding … ]
Sound off below, and tell me all about your favorite wheels!

Image credits: Alfa Romeo; Lewin Day

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148 thoughts on “What’s Your Favorite Wheel Design?”

  5. Wheels are insanely vehicle dependent. Everything from the size of the car, the style of the car, to the era the car was built in can have an impact. And some cars are just so known with a specific wheel that even if you put something else that you love onto it they would still look wrong.

    For example, I love 5 spoke wheels of all types, they are usually the most flexible and attractive wheels that can be used on almost any car and will look good. However, the range of 5 spoke wheels is huge. Everything from a vintage Cragar wheel to a modern “tuner” wheel to many factory wheels are some variation of 5 spoke.

    A factory design that I think hit it out of the park however and is relatively timeless is the Hellcat Brass Monkey style wheel. I sought out a pair for my car as I felt they would look perfect.

    https://flic.kr/p/2oVAzRi

    However, I’d never put them on a Delorean! Those turbines just work and anything else looks wrong.

    So…. 5 spokes are best, with the Brass Monkeys I think one of the best implementations of the style, but to say they are my favorite wheels would require some guardrails as wheels can be so specific and intimately symbiotic to the specific vehicle.

  6. I’m a fan of the nostalgia that wheel designs can hearken to. The New Beetle having its hubcap style? Perfect. Porsche doing a Faux Fuchs? Sign me up. Why can’t I find a good Snowflake for a Mk7 GTI?

  10. Eight lug Pontiac wheels manufactured by Kelsey Hayes are one of my favorite designs. Of course, you gotta take the drum brakes that are integral to the wheel design, but they’re actually pretty good drum brakes.
    I am rather fond of the Mahle gas burner wheels on my 914 six, they only weigh 9 pounds apiece!
    Speaking of underrated OEM wheels, the third generation Prius wheels look rather nice but they put these hideous looking plastic covers over them.

  12. BBS RK, specifically the original RK ETs. In satin silver they go great with just about every car from 1982 onwards. It’s the combination of the soft edge, deep inset, and thin spokes with a chunky center. They can make a heavy car look lighter, and can make a lighter car look more planted. They’re magic.

        1. You may be right. I’m awfully gun-shy after trying a set of Peugeot 505 wheels on my 87 GL Wagon and it was as gutless as an old VW bus. The other thing is, I play on gravel & dirt with it: I want narrow wheels. They’d be fine once the boost comes on, but I think if I’m going to drop real coin on wheels, I’ll get 15” ones so I can have more sidewall. Sparcos start at 16” last I checked

  15. In possibly the only example of a case where I do not value symmetry above all, I like odd-number spoked wheels. 3, 5, 7, all good. 4 and 6? Eh, I’ll pass.

    It doesn’t have to be simple spokes either. I tend to find that I like the busier wheel styles better if there’s some sort of odd spoke pattern to them. So if each spoke has 17 segments, I’ll like them better if those 17 segments are grouped in an odd number of “spokes”.

    Probably some fascinating psychoanalysis to be done about that, but there you go.

    1. I agree, with one big caveat. If the number of lug nuts is even, then I think an odd number of spokes can look pretty bad (assuming the lug nut/bolts are visible – on some designs they’re under a cap). And vice-versa — a design with an even number of spokes but an odd number of lug nuts also looks wrong.

      2. I did have some nice 5 spokes with caps on a car with 4 lugs once.
        Great looking wheels, but they turned out to be susceptible to bending.
        Also, a pain to remove the caps whenever I rotated the tires.

  19. It really depends on the type of vehicle they’re on, IMO different styles go with different vehicles.

    One of my favorite wheels ever is the machined face split-spoke alloys that were available on late 80’s/early 90’s 4Runners and Toyota pickups. For the life of me I can’t understand why nobody has come out with a 17″ version for late model trucks yet.

    Another favorite is the steel “rally” wheels that came on 60’s/70’s Chevy cars and squarebody trucks, with the corresponding correct hubcaps. The B-O-P cars had some great looking rallys too.

  22. Center Line Champ 500 5-lug

    Something about the symmetry, proportions, delicate beefiness, and understated elegance really does it for me, especially wide/deep ones. They’re 30+ years old at this point and I still haven’t seen any wheels that move me more.

  23. My ultimate favorite wheels are the white steel VW “Smoothies” that I have on my classic bug with my big logo chrome caps. I had my rears widened and rebanded by a guy in California to 7″ wide in the rear with a nice little dish. Hoping to do a 3-piece conversion on these some day in staggered 17″ size.

    But as a wheel whore, I have many many others as well. I’ll limit it to the most “baller” set of wheels I’ve ever owned: Work CR Kai in bronze (had these on my 04 STi in 17×9 size with meaty 245’s. Yum)

    I also love just about every BBS wheel, with the LM and RK being my ultimate favorites.

    1. With you: I kept my Parallels on all winter even with the old summer tires just because they make me happy when I walk out the door & see them

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