- We're doing a giveaway on this hoodie,
so please just stay 'til the end
of the video to find out how you can get entered
to win this super cool, super neat, super comfortable,
slightly larger than I normally wear,
but very nonetheless cool hoodie.
So just wait 'til the end, thank you.
(fire exploding)
Muscle cars, Los Angeles!
The United States of America!
And pretty much every single time you talk
to an old person about cars they rub it in their face
that back in their day it was way better
than the way that it is now.
(airbag exploding)
I have no idea why I'm talking in all caps lock,
but we're going to bring it down to about this level
so that I can actually talk, breathe and just speed along
with all the information that we're gonna talk about
when it comes down to the origin
of domestic aftermarket wheels.
I'm using my hands because there is a ton
of (bleep) to talk about,
and we're going to start it off right at the beginning.
You have the history of BBS in Schiltach, Germany,
you have the iconic history of Volk in Osaka,
you have all the interesting history
of American Racing in the United States of America.
So we're going to go into the beginning
of aftermarket wheels.
We're taking it back into the days
of like carriages and wood,
and Henry Ford,
and Oregon Trail.
We're bringing it back!
You had people modifying wooden carriages
with painted wheels and stained undercarriages,
and people doing weird (bleep).
Oh Carolyn, stop painting the wheels!
We're gonna get dysentery like Joseph did!
And just like Deadpool 2,
things got better from the original.
People started switching from the wooden carriage wheels
to things like steel wheels.
You had companies and people like Karl Benz
that were getting into actual wheels
that were made of metal and other things
that really they were just trying to make
because wood wheels were obviously not that reliable.
Karl Benz developed the motorwagen in 1885
with Michelin tires.
And I put the Dr. Evil tires around that
because it was pretty much just a solid rubber piece
that went around the wheel.
And from there people just started modifying anything
that they possibly could with their vehicles.
Good old Henry Ford was doing the same thing
with his steel welded spoke wheels,
because gosh darn it U.S. of A.
We're doing the same thing too.
Let's go to California, probably a good 30 years later.
You had big names trying to make a scene.
Vic Edelbrock, Roy Richter, Phil Wyon,
Robert Wyon, Ted Halibrand, Roy Vachon,
were all people that were just getting started
in the SoCal culture.
When it comes down to anything automotive related,
California was the place to be.
These guys were icons.
They pretty much created what everybody knows
and loves about the car community today.
And starting it out with wheels,
Roy Vachon was the man.
He would take your original wheels back in the day,
cut out the faces, flip 'em around,
weld them back in either with your existing barrels,
or he made wider barrels for you.
Strap 'em back on to your car and sell them for a premium,
so that you had a wider, deep dished wheel for your car.
Which is probably the most bad (bleep)
thing I've ever heard of.
And when it came to wheels,
that was pretty much all you could do.
That was until a Douglas Aircraft representative
named Ted Halibrand decided, (bleep) that.
I'm gonna do something different.
Ted Halibrand made wheels for pretty much every single facet
of the automotive racing scene
in the United States of America,
whether it was midget racing,
which sounds really weird when I say it like that,
drag racing, autocrossing, turn style racing,
or anything in between.
Ted Halibrand was the man to go to for wheels.
You had racing classes like the Le Mans, Formula One.
You know the pin thing, the thing that's got the
three spokes that shot out from the wheel,
and then you would like hammer it,
and then it had the six pins bind thing?
That's Halibrand, that's his thing.
That man and his company was an American Racing icon.
And then American racing happened,
which is something completely different from Ted Halibrand
and is something that you probably also remember
as one of the iconic after market wheels in America.
You had pioneers making these things like Jim Ellingson,
Roy Richter, and all the people that made American Racing
what it was and what it is to this day.
Romeo Palamides was the guy
that pretty much sat there staring at aircraft planes,
which was essentially the actual money maker
back in the day,
and said, (hand clapping)
could we steal that for cars?
Could we do that?
Do you think, would Facebook mind?
Let's use that, let's use that.
The torque thrust
was born. (heavenly rejoicing)
Angels wept, Republicans and Democrats
finally stopped arguing.
My wife finally stopped buying mason jars.
Seriously, Rebecca, I don't need a separate mason jar
for my toothbrush and my toothpaste.
They can go in one mason jar.
I don't need two!
American Racing was considered by most to be one
of the newest gens first primary pioneer
after market wheel company in the United States
that birthed from the American Racing heritage
of Southern California.
They were the guys.
They were the one company that was made
in the good old United States of America.
Woo! (eagle screeching)
You also had names like Dick Beeth.
(laughing) Dick.
That was pretty much the first ET mag in aluminum,
which is by the way kind of a little bit of
a controversial topic when you talk
to American Racing about it.
But he was also iconic in his own right
for making that wheel.
He was also one of the first people
to introduce a unilug system that was essentially just a way
to shim the lugs so that you could put four by 75
or 4.75 onto a five by five lug pattern,
or a 4 1/2 lug pattern.
It was frowned upon then, it's frowned upon now.
Why would you ever do that?
And all of these names came because of these three things.
They were either one, just coming out of the war.
Two, originally had no plans to start making wheels.
And three, or three, actually just hung out at
Bell's auto parts, which was the place.
If there was a place that you would say started all
of the after market performance,
all the after market wheels,
all of the after market everything, it's Bells.
These guys were making stuff, because no one else was.
There was no Google.
You couldn't just go home and sit at the desk
and have your 1949 Packard in the back and jump on Google
because that didn't exist at the time.
You had to go out and literally make your own wheels.
The only reason any of these companies existed,
whether you're talking about wheels or performance parts,
or anything in between
was because people legitimately
just didn't (bleep) make them at the time.
They had to make them themselves because they wanted to.
Imagine you wanting to have a part
for your car, but it not existing.
And then you, existing in the hub
of American Racing heritage and voila!
(magical twinkling)
You have what sparked the actual culture
of cars and wheels
in America. (eagle screeching)
The hot rod era revolutionized the American Racing degree,
because of the fact that everybody just got done
with the war and everybody was happy because we won,
and the fact that we came back and we had a lot of money.
Businesses could barely keep up.
And because the business was booming,
that meant that people wanted to do more extravagant things
to essentially get themselves out there.
So what did they do?
They built bigger wheels because they had bigger d,
I mean, they had bigger cars that they were putting
these bigger wheels on and then ultimately,
you had bigger wheels that looked cooler.
A lot of people started to really get involved
in customizing their wheels.
And then the '70s and '80s came along.
The night is dark and full of terrors.
Environmentalists were finally getting their way
in the Congress, and hippies were just doing a lot of drugs.
Ultimately, the car world,
they just didn't have anything that they could do
because it was too expensive.
But there was one hobby still kicking, the low riders.
("Still Dre" by Dr. Dre)
With so much more of the car scene resting
from its rockstar dragging days that was switched
and substituted for cruising from the low riding scene.
People were spending less time on the track
and spending more time just driving around,
because at the end of the day it cost less.
It went from going fast to going slow
and trying to keep everything growing,
but at the same time, the passion never died,
it just changed.
Things got flashier, brightier, and chromier.
And chromier is not a word.
And that started to substitute function in wheels to form.
You had companies going from their straight Cragar Mag days
to going to Dayton wire wheels.
Now, Dayton's been around since 1916,
and if you didn't know,
they're probably one of the most iconic wheels
when it comes to just wheels.
If you don't know Daytons,
go out there, look at Daytons.
Talk to Jasper, he loves them.
He wants them on his BMW.
They're just like the wheels
when it comes down to low-riding days.
And they didn't really blow up
until the '70s hit, and they hit hard.
They hit like puberty.
They hit like just it wasn't good.
But because the scene began to grow,
things changed and people didn't really care
because there was nothing really as cool
as hammering down your Ds
before going down Whittier Boulevard.
That was the thing that people did.
That's what kept the American wheel scene alive.
And it became the wheel
that defined the low riding culture of the '70s,
which was pretty much the only culture that existed.
Then J.D. Greg from Tulsa, Oklahoma decided
to (bleep) the whole thing, clean up because he could.
The '80s finally came around,
the environmentalists were going away.
Congress was back to yelling at each other
and just like everything else in the world,
the hippies went back to doing normal jobs,
turned into parents and now we have our generation,
'cause we're doing just fine.
And that's when you had somebody like J.D. come along
and say, but what if the wheels were spinning
but then the car wasn't?
J.D. are you high?
But here's the thing,
the low rider scene was having a blast.
They were rolling down Whittier (screams),
they were having a good time.
And then the domestic racing scene was coming back,
because gas prices were going back down,
because we realized we weren't running out of oil
and then they were coming back.
And there was this little third guy,
he was a little shy like,
hey buddy, it's gonna be all right.
Come on out, come on out.
You can hang out with the cool kids.
You can hang out with us.
And then the kid came out, and they were like,
no you can't!
Because that was the Tuner scene.
The Tuner scene was finally coming around in the '80s.
You had TSW in the early '80s going public.
You had Konig wheels.
You had American Racing coming out,
making all these wheels,
and the Tuner scene was getting hot.
It was getting heavy,
and it was getting moist in California.
(hip hop music)
♪ I'm moist. ♪
- People wanted to start getting into the Tuner scene,
and this is where it got really, really weird.
Why have a big long boat of a car that could go fast
in a straight mile when you could have something
that feels good and rolls around the country side,
the hilly landscape of Los Angeles and have something
that's sporty, and quirky, and fun.
You can have something that,
you didn't know that the reliability was complete
dog (bleep) because it was a Mazda RX7 or a Dodson 240Z.
And that's when the whole culture really started
to splinter because you had companies
and wheel companies alike making wheels
for function for the drag strip,
for car show people that wanted to roll
around on the streets,
and then you had this Tuner scene coming in
and getting involved and the whole thing just blew up
to high (bleep) because everybody thought
that it was just gonna be about making wheels
to go down the drag strip in a straight line.
You had all these things happening,
and because of the late '60s creation of SEMA,
you had all these companies coming together every year,
and the business was booming.
Everybody wanted to have everybody else's wheels
and because there was so much competition,
there were so many different companies involved,
that there was this whole macroeconomic boom
of the after market car accessory division,
and wheels was one of the biggest things that you could buy.
And not only that, but with CFC Tech
that was coming out in the '80s and '90s,
it made prototyping wheels just that much cheaper
for all these wheel companies
to try making different style wheels.
So now you had companies making 10 different
or 15 different styles versus two.
But now you had Dayton, you had American Racing,
you had Cragar, you had Motegi,
you had TSW, you had Konig,
and you had everything else happening at the same time
that ultimately resulted in this entire market exploding
and the entire car culture ate it alive
like it was (bleep) pancakes on Saturday morning.
Everybody wanted to tell everybody else why their style
of car culture was the best style of car culture.
But here's what was happening.
After market wheels were getting bigger
because bigger meant better.
You couldn't go past an OutKast song in the early '90s
without them mentioning the fact
that if you didn't have 18s on your car,
you were pretty much a poser.
Even companies like Ford and Chevrolet were trying
to keep up with their sport car scene,
and making bigger wheels with them from the factory
in hopes that they wouldn't swap 'em out.
And then the 2000s came swinging
in terms of a generation change,
and the fact that everything that was once cool,
was now not cool.
What was once hype, was now just history.
Companies like American Racing and Cragar and Dayton
were getting pushed to the side
for new revolutionary brands that we know and hear of today.
Companies like Niche, and Rotiform, and TSW, and ANRKY.
Along with brands from international side of things like,
Volk, and BBS, and Gram Lights, and Raise,
and all of those companies started to get
into the United States of America.
And the days of simple muscle car wheels were no longer in.
(sad music)
Wheels have taken inspiration from the designs
that have come ocean side.
And now you get the domestic wheel game of what it is today.
You still have the legends making wheels,
and you have new domestic companies,
like Vossen taking it in their own way.
What wheels were once blocky five spokes,
are now thin, multi-spoken infinity lip designs.
You have wheels coming out that are still
in the same way American, but nevertheless,
not like anything American wheels
have been like in the past.
But just like anything cool,
it's fun to reminisce about days that have long past.
So if you're interested in picking up wheels,
tires, suspension, head over to fitmentindustries.com.
We have all of that and of course,
if you're looking to win this hoodie,
all you have to do is first off subscribe.
Say that you've subscribed in the comments section,
then drop a comment below on what you'd like us
to talk about next.
We will pick the top rated comment on YouTube,
and we will give you first a sweatshirt,
and then we're gonna steal your idea
and make a video out of it.
So I'm Alex from Fitment Industries,
let us know what you guys think of this video
and let us know if you want us to make more,
and we will see you later, peace.
(relaxed hip hop music)
(eagle screeching)