- [Narrator] Busch, Busch, Busch
Busch, Busch, Busch, Busch.
- I need more Busch Light, more Copenhagen,
more walls next to other countries, more V8s,
more not paying our taxes, more American guns
to talk about this next company.
(rap music)
Welcome to Cragar.
The man, the myth, the legend
of Cragar wheels.
Did any of you guys actually ask for this?
No, then why are we doing it?
Well because Klassen actually won't respond to our emails.
So we though we'd talk about the brand
that our mechanic wanted us to talk about.
So that makes about two people
that have ever asked for Cragar wheel history.
Founded in 1930 by Crane Gartz,
Cragar wheels was founded with wild, bald eagle juice
and American facial hair.
This company was pretty much breed and born
at the difficult times of the recession.
Cragar wheels was a company, that actually
wasn't even involved in making wheels until the late '50s.
Cragar was ultimately making Ford Model A manifolds
and anything that had to do with airplanes
because back in the day, they just really didn't know
what else to do.
Crane teamed up with Harlan Fengler,
to actually partner the company to get involved
in the after market automotive scene.
But because of how everything worked out,
Crane really just wanted to get involved
in whatever they could.
What does Cragar stand for?
Well that's pretty simple if you break down
the first three letters of both his first and last name.
You get Cragar.
Because Cragar had a small fortune behind him,
which if you didn't know,
was founded on a publishing company.
Cragar was able to buy the tools, patterns, and machinery
that they needed to get involved in making any sort of, well
technical, automotive, or aerospace products
you can possibly imagine.
Cragar was doing well
but they weren't doing that well.
They actually weren't doing well enough
to survive The Great Depression.
And in 1932, the Cragar name ultimately collapsed
and there was no light in sight for the company.
But it didn't take long because in 1933,
George Wight from Bell Auto Parts
decided to purchase the Cragar name.
Wight was a grizzly, little man that made parts
and flipped parts out of junk yards
to sell them to fuel his racing pedigree and--
(clears through)
I got beer stuck in my throat.
There's just nothing quite like 12 flowing ounces of America
in every sip or it's my acid reflux.
I can't decide what it is.
Might be both.
Now this was all happening in Southern California
which is where a lot of the original racing pedigree
was founded on.
But George Wight had something that Cragar didn't.
Finding absolutely amazing talent.
You see because Cragar just tried to make products,
Wight went out there and tried to find people
that could explode this brand
into something completely different.
And before you knew it,
they were the hot new kids on the block.
They had famous actors, famous musicians,
favorite fabricators and mechanics,
and race car drivers,
all coming to Bell Auto Parts
because of the talent that Wight was finding
to produce all of these high end parts.
And the Bell Auto Parts name began to grow.
Because of how everything worked back in the day,
it was all word of mouth.
If you have all the famous people and all the rich people
and all the people that know how to drive, in one place,
you're gonna do pretty good for yourself.
And for the most part, the Cragar name sat on the sidelines.
They continued to be influenced by Bell Auto Parts
but for the most part,
the purchase was originally for the patterns and machinery.
It really had nothing to do with the name
or why, you know, they were doing anything.
Just like anything else,
you don't know that you need something
until you don't have it anymore.
And until George Wight ultimately passed away in 1943,
the Cragar name didn't see a whole lot of light.
In fact, it wasn't until 1945,
that the Cragar name really started to get back involved
with a man named Roy Richter.
Now Roy was, when he was young,
a scrawny redhead that just wanted to get involved
in everything racing oriented.
But this was something that Roy was very good at.
He was good at being a perfectionist.
In fact, he was considered
one of the best fabricators at the time.
When Bell Auto Parts picked him up for fabricating parts
and machinery from the Cragar partnership,
Roy just began to take off and he was synonymous
with some of the best work
you could possibly get in Southern California.
And to a lot of people,
Roy is the reason that Bell and Cragar
continued to be a name throughout the difficult times
of the '40s and into the '50s.
It wasn't until, ultimately passing of Wight,
that Roy decided that he wanted to take on a lease
of the Cragar name and the Bell Auto Parts name,
which had gone through ups and downs
and everything in between.
And then something interesting happened in 1945.
We won the war
which is weird.
You didn't know winning the war
would create some sort of internal growth of business
and prideful nationwide excitement,
and being American,
and drinking Busch Light.
Talking about V8s and racing cars in circles
and not stopping and (mumbles)
Talking about other things, like
having fast cars and pretty women
because America.
(metal banging)
Who's even hitting out there if it's not you?
(metal banging)
- [Man] Really inconsistent.
Oh, god.
(laughs)
So you see, the automotive community
had grown exponentially after the World War II.
Americans wanted something to do
with all of their pastime and being freedom.
- Yeah.
- Being freedom and Americanized
and all that sort of good stuff,
and they thought, what else to do besides
make fast cars that go in a straight line.
You had infamous names like Vic Edelbrock, Sr.
Phil Weiand, Ed Iskenderian, Stu Hilborn, Phil Remington
come out of the social work and start pushing
everything that had to do with after market,
well, car stuff.
You see, back in the day,
when you wanted after market wheels,
there was like two options and both of them
really weren't that fun or good at the time.
A lot of people preferred to just cut their steel wheels,
flip the face, and then weld them back together
before putting them back on the car
so you can get a deep lip.
But then these people would paint them,
they'd pinstripe them, they'd plate them in chrome
and that's how you got a lot of after market wheels
back in the day.
Back in the time, Roy wanted to have something cooler
and they thought, "Well if anybody can do it, it's them."
and they decided involved using the Cragar wheel name.
I hate to say it but sorry tuner guys.
Muscle car guys came out with chrome lips before you did.
In fact, they liked lipped wheels before, pretty much,
any tuner even thought of it.
In 1964, the most infamous wheels to ever hit
the domestic market officially came out, the S/S.
Now if you didn't know what the S/S is,
or you've been living under a rock.
The S/S is realistically,
probably the most infamous wheel ever, like ever.
Like domestic, internationally, everything in between
whether you live in Europe,
whether you live in America,
whether you live in Australia, or Canada
which is like 90% of our viewers,
it was the most popular thing you could buy for wheels.
In fact, going under the Cragar name,
Roy Richter, all he wanted to do was
to make good wheels that were affordable and looked nice.
Because of the market
that they were hitting in the price point,
they were hitting at the same time,
they hit a goldmine.
They continued to be, probably,
the most successful wheel to date.
The S/S is considered one of the most duplicated wheels
of all time.
It's been considered one of the most
successful wheels of all time
and probably, the single, biggest reason
that anybody knows of domestic wheels
back in the '60s, '70s, and '80s
of the United States of America.
Back in the day, if you didn't have Cragars,
you were just lame.
Now what made this wheel different
from other people making after market wheels
was the fact that they lasted a long time.
The five spokes, were actually, clipped together
to the barrel in a different way then anybody else
had ever done. You see, back in the day,
they used screws and bolts and things like that,
that were heavy and completely inconsistent
with keeping strength rigidity in an after market wheel.
What the Cragar S/S managed to do
was to make the clip-based system, essentially,
a really easy way to shave a lot of weight,
maintain rotational mass,
and to be a safe wheel.
There were times where the first set of wheels
that went out, had very small imperfections
that he wanted to take back from his friends
so that he could fix it, so it was a perfect wheel.
We're talking about aesthetic scratches
that this guy didn't wanna have.
That's how particular Roy was with the Cragar S/S wheel.
In fact, he got mad at his own team for using them
for high speed drag racing
because, ultimately, what Roy says,
that was not their intended purpose.
For a long time, Roy continued to battle and fight
and essentially, continue to be successful
but push away from what the wheels weren't meant to do
for a long time.
It became clear that Cragar needed to come out with a wheel
that was meant for high speed racing.
It wasn't until they got into the Mag division
of their U.S. wheels, that they really started to do that.
But Cragar wheels is pretty much known,
for the one and only, infamous S/S.
From there, Cragar develops the wheels that would go on
one of the fastest vehicles to hit almost 666 miles an hour,
the Blue Thunderbolt, the Blue Flame.
Who comes up with these names?
Cragar founded the Five-Second club
and created a second Five-Second club
because Cragar decided that if there's gonna be
anybody at the forefront of making fast cars,
they wanted their wheels to be on it.
In 1971, Cragar was purchased by Wynn Oil Company.
By 1972, they were already being awarded one of the
manufacturer award of the year
for making some of the best products
you could buy at the time.
It wasn't until 1983, that Roy Richter, ultimately,
passed away, which left the company in,
somewhat of a disarray.
Cragar continued to make wheels
and continued to try and push the name as much as possible.
But between the '80s and now,
not a whole lot has happened with the Cragar name.
They were ultimately purchased By Carlstar in 2014
and rebranded shortly after.
In terms of new design, they really don't have a whole lot
and they realistically, won't have a whole lot
because the Cragar name isn't associated with anything new.
It's associated with the time that has passed
and a company that no longer exists.
And while there are people that run the Cragar wheel brand,
they do it for nostalgia and probably not to push the style
and what makes new wheels cool.
There's nothing wrong with that.
There are gonna be people that are gonna
continue to run the Cragar wheel
because it is a cool wheel.
But it's unfortunate, that there probably
won't be a company like Cragar to come across
for quite a long time.
That's everything that we have on the Crager wheel history.
We hope you guys enjoyed.
Be sure to subscribe and of course,
we're doing another giveaway.
We're gonna be giving away a t-shirt
and a banner on top of the one we gave away last week.
All you have to do is drop a comment on your dream car.
You have to drop a comment on what your dream car is
and if you wanna tell us what to talk about next week,
be happy to do so.
Our last weeks winner, Mario's gonna get me right now,
is gonna be going out to, let's see here.
I'm just gonna go, I don't like iPhones.
Its kinda weird.
The next winner of this weeks giveaway, goes out to
Tito Lopez.
Tito Lopez, congratulations on winning.
You wanna email us at shop@fitmentindustries.com
let us know, what you like to get for a shirt size.
We'll be sure to hook you up.
I would throw this phone but it would probably break.
I'm Alan from Fitment Industries.
We'll see you later.
Peace.