American Racing Custom Wheels – The Great American Rims

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. And they use American Racing Custom Wheels.

Cars were customized in home garages to perform in ways that original equipment manufacturers never intended. Machines took on mutated shapes that ranged from the muscular profile of a chopped Mercury to the spidery efficiency of the early dragsters. In 1956 three of those early innovators joined forces to design and build after-market car wheels for street racing.

Romeo Palamides and partner Jim Ellison designed and built dragsters, using a San Francisco machine shop as home base. When Romeo, the driver of the duo, started using the magnesium wheels he and Ellison had built for their dragster word of the wheels’ high strength-to-weight ratio quickly spread.

Demand for the wheels grew until the partners decided there was enough demand to justify a full blown after-market wheel business. Romeo and Jim, with engineer Tom Griffith founded American Racing Equipment. American Racing custom wheels broke into the mainstream in the early sixties with the introduction of the five-spoke American Racing ‘Torq Thrust’ wheel. The look of the wheel was attractive to non-racers, while the high performance was a hit with racers.

The radical shape of the spokes (‘tapered parabolic’ in car design lingo) revolutionized wheel design. This breakthrough has long become standard in the industry, but American Wheel is still the company that the after-market industry and mainstream auto makers as well look to for the evolution of the automobile wheel.

American Racing custom wheels have, in many ways, transcended the automotive culture to take a place along side other pop culture icons like the Winchester, the Harley, and the Blackberry. Did you know there are people who collect car wheels? I guess it’s not surprising, considering everything else that gets collected. In any case, original ‘Torq Thrust’ wheels are highly prized by collectors. But no American muscle car wheel is as highly prized as one particular broken American Racing Vector wheel.

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 Custom Wheels are common in the movies. Film directors love the powerful look they 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.