Come stand before the wheel wall at Rent-A-Rim, but you’d better wear shades. Designer shades, of course. Shine-ee. Up close, these gleaming chrome beasts are bigger than you’d expect — stack a couple sideways and they’d make a pretty good coffee table. Better yet, slap ’em on your car and boost its street cred; and in some circles your personal sexy will get extra RPMs, too.
Custom wheels — rims, shoes, dubs, blades — and their companion skinny tires are the hottest trend in a thriving automobile aftermarket that includes electronics, lighting and other custom accoutrements. Rims are the fad that turned into a trend that became an entrenched part of car culture.
Talk about reinventing the wheel. The industry generated more than $4.2 billion in sales in ’05, a robust 10-percent increase from the previous year. Revenue has doubled in the last decade. “The reason car enthusiasts go to the wheels first is that it has the most immediate impact on the appearance of your vehicle,” says Peter MacGillivray, vice president of marketing and communications for the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA), an industry trade group.
What are the driving forces behind this nation of wheel nuts? As a fella who’s perfectly content with the 16-inch stock jobs on my ’03 Nissan Altima, I endeavored to find out. Wheel appeal is a tricky matrix of hip-hop’s widening cultural influence, our collective obsession with celebrities and their toys, the American push to personalize our possessions, and savvy marketing.
It’s also worth noting that the designer wheel business is booming while American automakers find themselves in dire straits. Rims are “one of the only successful stories in the automobile industry right now,” MacGillivray says.
Not all the news about custom wheels is glowing. These vanity items have caused some folks to overextend themselves, only to have their rims repossessed by rent-to-own operations. Custom wheels are also prime targets of thieves, who sometimes go to great lengths to steal them, even including murder.
It’s a summer afternoon, and a steady flow of folks pop into Rent-A-Rim on N. Dale Mabry in Tampa with a chrome jones. A muscular guy in a tank top and b-ball shorts stops in to make a payment, his toddler son in tow. A 50-something man with a bad comb-over inquires about juicing up the wheels on his ’77 Monte Carlo. It’s nothing for people to drop $2,000, $5,000 or more so that their vehicles can roll in style.
Toquanda Baker, a 26-year-old single mother of two who also has a foster child, waits for 20-inchers (“20s” in wheel argot) to be installed on her 1993 Infiniti J30. She works two jobs — in childcare and at SweetBay — and is buying nearly $2,000 worth of rims and tires on a one-year rent-to-own plan that’ll end up costing her more than twice that.
She’s chosen wheels she considers to be more “girlie” — deep dishes of blinding chrome without spokes or fancy doodads. “They’re something for me,” Toquanda says, a tad shyly. “I wanted to spend something other than on bills …” She catches herself. “Well, it’s a bill, but it’s something special for me. A lot of my girlfriends have ’em. We’re equal as the men. I got these by myself — without a man.”
Go, girl. Even so, it’s still mostly a guy thing. Today’s core rim enthusiasts — 16-25-year-old males — mirror the hot-rodders of the ’60s, only it’s more about the dash for flash than the need for speed. It’s not uncommon to see 20-inch rims, custom paint jobs and sick sound systems on four-cylinder imports that go 0-60 in half an hour.
In fact, one of the more ludicrous aspects of the wheel scene is rag-ass “beater” cars sporting big chrome spokes. Robert Smith, who runs a Chicago PR firm that deals extensively with hip-hop culture, says that this phenomenon is often the subject of jokes in his African-American barber shop. “You never want the bottom of your car to be worth more than the top of it,” he says by phone with a chuckle.
Others see it differently. “It’s part of an aspirational lifestyle,” says Myles Kovacs, a native of East Los Angeles who founded the hip car-culture magazine Dub. “You grow up in the ‘hood and you aspire to success and its status symbols. Cars are an easy extension of our egos, and the beautiful thing is that they’re mobile. If houses had wheels, some guys would drive around in their homes.”
Rims can give a kid swagger, make him look like he’s from a higher socioeconomic class, Kovacs says, adding, “I heard someone say recently, you’ve got white collar, blue collar and gold collar — that’s when you have no money but you act like you do.”
And then there’s the greatest motive of all. “One hundred percent of people who are passionate about their automobiles and [customize them] do so to attract the opposite sex,” Kovacs says. “Showing up in a nice car will work wonders for an ugly-lookin’ dude.”
But the rampant success of designer wheels can’t all be about young cats chasin’ tail. A major factor in the industry’s growth and staying power over the last half-decade is its move into the mainstream. Rims are not just for rappers, pro athletes and ‘hood rats anymore. Industry people positively beam when they talk of soccer moms putting 22s on family SUVs.
Rick Valderrama, co-owner of Rent-A-Rim, fondly tells the story of one customer: the 65-year-old founder of Pipo’s Cuban restaurant in Tampa. “He brought his pickup truck straight from the dealer and wanted 24s put on,” Valderrama says. A recent study co-sponsored by SEMA found that nearly 27 percent of new car buyers opt for custom wheels and/or tires.
The fastest-growing market segment in rim world is high-end buyers. In the parking lot of Boulevard Customs in Feather Sound sits an array of dazzling vehicles, including a slick white SUV with matching 26-inch wheels, which are only four inches smaller than the biggest rims available. Just this year, a couple of manufacturers rolled out 30-inch monsters. Only the Hummer H2 can accommodate them without significant modifications to the suspension. You can buy a set of 30s online for $30,000.
Shelton Quarles isn’t thinking 30s, but the Bucs middle linebacker, a lifelong car buff, does change out his rides frequently. And rims are a must. Not long ago, he got rid of his Bentley with black 22s — one reason is that he had too many tire blowouts — in favor of a Mercedes S550 with chrome 22s. “I just like to create a look that’s unique to our area,” Quarles says by cell phone while waiting to tee off at a golf tournament in Wyoming. “Get people wondering what it is.”
Tom DuPont is president of Clearwater-based DuPont Registry magazine, which advertises ultra-luxury items. His company has a spin-off publication called Celebrity Car and also owns Boulevard Customs. “It was about three years ago that you saw less bling and more substance, more taste,” he says, but even so, some of his uber-wealthy clients can’t stop themselves from going overboard. “We had a guy who insisted on putting 22s on a Ferrari,” DuPont recounts with whimsy in his voice. “He popped the clutch and ripped the tires off the back end.”
A $450,000 silver Porsche Carrera GT sits in the Boulevard Customs showroom. It has gorgeous, high-performance wheels and tires — that came stock. Why would someone put aftermarket rims on a Ferrari or Bentley or Rolls? “People are taking what were once thought of as perfect automobiles and modifying them,” says MacGillivray of the SEMA trade association. “They’re buying into the national movement of personalization. After all, we live in a culture where you can get a hundred different variations on a cup of coffee; people have personal ring tones on their cell phones. The same is true for cars. We’re personalizing them to increase their functionality and styling.”
Mike McCanless, 43, of St. Petersburg, a long-time car enthusiast who’s a partner with Paradise Communities real estate developers, drives a sporty Mercedes E55 AMG sedan with a supercharged, 470-horsepower V8. He recently decided to increase the size of its wheels — from 18 to 19 inches. He likes the performance look, and has no interest in big, gaudy blades and rubber-band tires. But that one inch matters to him. “It’s hard for me to leave stuff alone,” he says. “I’ve always modified my vehicles. I spend a lot of time in my car. It’s like a mobile office. It’s really an expression of my personality.”
So how did we get to the place where some cars’ wheels are worth more than the cars themselves, where one reason for the popularity of Chrysler’s tank-like 300 series is its huge wheel wells that can house big rims, where about 130 mostly small to mid-size companies constantly bust out new designs to capture a segment of the vibrant wheel market? What’s the narrative arc that brought us to “hi-risers”: frumpy Chevy sedans from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s — called “donks,” “boxes” and “bubbles” — retrofitted for 26-inch wheels, transformed into the auto equivalent of monster trucks?
There are no definitive answers, actually. The phenomenon dates back to the ’50s, when early hot rods sported chrome “Moonie” hubcaps. The movement took off in the ’60s with the advent of muscle cars, and their glitzy, five-spoke “mag” (magnesium) wheels. The infusion of European cars in the ’70s added a new stylistic dimension, but late in the decade the first gas crisis scared away all but the most ardent aficionados. Design took a backseat, which gave rise to the boxy look of the ’80s.
The recent watershed started to trickle in during the late ’80s/early ’90s. The low-rider movement in Southern California entered the pop-culture radar. Smith, the PR guy, remembers the stir that the be-rimmed Mustang in the 1993 film Menace II Society caused. Early gangsta rap videos showcased “a lot of gold [wire] spokes,” he says.
Most wheel industry types track the advent of today’s large chrome numbers to the mid to late ’90s, when bling got a chokehold on hip-hop. Every rapper worth his gold chains released videos showcasing not only scantily clad chicks draped all over him, but a smokin’ ride with shiny shoes.
“I got plenty of people who’d see wheels on a video and ask for the exact ones,” says Ray Reyes, an 11-year veteran of the rim biz who’s the general manager of RZ Motoring in Tampa.
The race was on. Scads of upstart companies jumped into the game to see which could most dazzle the marketplace. “It’s an industry of entrepreneurs, people who have built their businesses out of passion,” says SEMA’s MacGillivray. “They’re so close to it that they can leverage trends and new ideas almost instantly. Big companies take months, even years, to develop products, and by then it’s too late. They are forging partnerships with the smaller companies, though, which our group tries to facilitate.”
Like all objects of desire, shiny rims have a darker side. Some of it’s kind of funny: Rent-A-Rim staff sets aside time for repo expeditions. A couple of guys can put a car on blocks in about 10 minutes. Not long ago, they pulled up in front of a downtown Tampa nightclub and speedily removed the rims from the DJ’s Volvo. The bouncers and people in line looked on, laughing.
Leaning against Rent-A-Rim’s showroom wall is a set of special 24s called “floaters,” wheels that use counterweights to give the impression that they’re not moving as the car glides down the street. A guy bought the $12,000 set (with tires) and paid about $7,000 over three months. The customer vanished, Valderrama says, and a subsequent skip trace showed that his new address was the Hillsborough County Jail. He’d been busted on drug charges. Rent-A-Rim had to repossess the floaters, and they’re now available for resale at a reduced price.
Sometimes it’s not repo men putting cars on blocks: Sometimes thieves don’t even bother with blocks. And sometimes it gets much worse than that. In early June, two Dallas carjackers ordered a Navy petty officer, on leave from his fourth tour in Iraq, out of his pickup, shot and killed him and robbed his vehicle. They were after his 22s. The two ex-cons were quickly caught.
Rim-related murders are rare, but deft thieves can relieve a car of its shimmering spokes in minutes. And experts say that the steady rise in U.S. car thefts since 1999 is partly due to the lust for designer wheels.
One of the most ignominious cases of wheel theft in Tampa Bay happened in 2002 when St. Petersburg Catholic student Dean Marshlack was abducted in the school parking lot by two men who held him at gunpoint while they drove around St. Pete in Marshlack’s Ford Expedition looking for a shop to remove the 22s. The men were apprehended, and charged with kidnapping and grand theft. It left many of us wondering: Why not just leave the kid in the parking lot and steal the whole SUV?
What’s the most important feature of a custom wheel? Size. It really, really matters. Enthusiasts have watched with wonder and delight as rims have become bigger and bigger over the years. “I remember as a kid when I first saw 18-inch wheels on a Mercedes, it was the coolest thing,” says David Fowlkes, the founder of Davin wheels and the inventor of “spinners.” “When 20s first came out, man, everyone got excited.”
In ’98, Lil’ Troy rapped, “Wanna be a — ballah, shot callah/ 20-inch blades — on the Impala.” Little did he know how quickly his lyrics would become passé.”
As wheels have gotten bigger, tires have gotten skimpier. Nitto will soon unveil a model that’s 10 inches wide, 1.75 inches thick. The tire will allow owners of smaller foreign cars to outfit their rides with 22s. And if you’re looking to get up into the 28 and 30 range, rubber can run as much as $5,000 a set.
Rim heads have to make sacrifices: the bigger the blades, the thinner the tire, the rougher the ride. Most are OK with it. Obed Hernandez, 19, of Tampa, just bought black and chrome 18s at Rent-A-Rim for his ’94 Honda Accord. A trim, friendly kid who’s wearing a G Unit T-shirt, some gold chains and a blingy watch, he’s just biding his time until — hopefully not too far down the line —— he lands his dream ride: a Cadillac EXT pickup. With rims, natch.
How big? “As big as I can get them, as long as they fit and I can make a U-turn,” Obed replies. “And I’m willing to compromise on the U-turn. I’ll settle for three-point turns.”
I can’t resist one more question: Rims or food? Obed smiles. “Rims,” he says. “I can go on a diet, or eat Saltines.”
This article appears in Jul 5-11, 2006.