Wheely Great: Funky Wheel Designs on New Cars
We visited this topic about six weeks ago, talking about wheel designs from years gone by: Thunderbird SC, Corvette sawblades, et al. But after seeing a brace of really cool wheel designs on new cars over the last two or three fortnights, we wanted to reprise the idea through that lens instead.
The Nissan brand was the impetus for this list today, following a pair of hoops we saw that were endlessly entertaining or simply reminded us of a design we enjoyed in the past. Nostalgia is a helluva drug, kids. But as old timers, we’ll take out hits where we can get them.
[Images: Author, Ford]
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First up are the wheels we saw on a lowly Nissan Sentra. Don’t get it twisted - this is not to say the Sentra is a bad car, rather that it has an affordable price point many tens of thousands less than the average transaction price in America these days.
All angles and angry slashes, they are immediately reminiscent of the designs we used to get on econoboxes back in the day before accountants ruined everything. And even then, we were largely restricted to sad sack plastic hubcaps. Go on - you can’t tell me that particular wheel design on the new Sentra isn’t reminiscent of what was found on old Sunbirds. That’s not a slur; these things are great.
Similar praise will be heaped on the wheels found on a new Nissan Leaf. These are something of a return to ‘circle gets the square’ design, in which round wheels have distinctly cubist designs. The silver accents on this 19-inch wheel help the square design to stand out, similar to what the same brand did for the angled wheel styling on its Sentra.
If those reminded this author of a Sunbird, these are definitely in the camp of a Cavalier Z24. Again, this is not a bad thing. The automotive landscape can always use an infusion of creativity; that it is found in a completely normal car is even better.
Rounding (pun intended) out our list of new cars on sale today with funky wheel designs, we would like to nominate the entire Tremor trim from Ford. While these are otherwise unremarkable five-spoke alloys, one pocket is painted Tremor Orange to help it stand out from the rest. Why?
“Why not?” was literally the answer provided to this author by a design lead on the Tremor team. We love that type of flippancy which is all too rare at major automakers these days. Special mention goes out to the so-called Turbofan wheels on the Maverick Lobo, inspired by street trucks of the ‘80s and ‘90s.
