- Hey guys, so if you're just watching
this video, you're going to notice this beautiful
sunset behind me, or it may just be blown out
because that's how video cameras work.
But if you want to know something else
that's beautiful, BBS Wheels. We just partnered
with BBS wheels to give away a free set of
up to the performance line BBS Wheels,
so there's gonna be a description link below
for you to pick up a T, it also helps us make a
donation to United Way, so every single t-shirt
you pick up we get to make a donation, and it
gets your automatically entered in to win.
So, with that being said enjoy the video guys,
we hope you really love it.
When it comes to name brand wheels,
there's not many that carry the pedigree
of companies like BBS. We've talked about them
in the past when I was young and had no facial
hair, and now we're back to talking about them again
because I still don't have any facial hair and
I just want to talk about BBS, and, well, you know
it seems like BBS doesn't seem to come up with
many forged wheel designs anymore and we decided
to ask them why. By the way, I'm Alex from Fitment
Industries and if you're looking for some BBS
Wheels or wheels in general Fitmentinudstries.com,
there's a sales plug where we can help you out
with that. That's what we got, lets get into this.
To be honest, we can help you pick up a set, you know,
a lovely set of wheels. But seriously, don't even
think about going to E-bay, all right? I see you
out there price searching. Anyway, BBS is a brand
that at its core, has been around for one reason
and one reason alone. To make racing, OEM, and after
market wheels. Like, that is it. Like, that is the
focus, that's always been the focus. And now with
most people being able to dive head first into
the wheel market with, you know, a little, you know,
a little bit of, a little bit of cash, you're
seeing wheel brands pop up like all over the place,
and that happens year after year.
If you jump on Facebook, you more than likely
have seen like four or five new wheel brands,
and then you're gonna go to Sevas and there'll
be like 20 more wheel brands and then the year
after that there'll be 20 more wheel brands.
And that's just like a thing right now.
So, when it comes to you, an avid, professional, educated
definitely not just window shopping car guy or gal,
who goes to compare wheel brands and models you
might often find that BBS offers the same style
of wheels they always kind of have. So why?
Well, here's the big old history of that.
Every single wheel starts life at BBS, okay?
Like no tooling, no nothing, comes from anywhere else.
It's all in BBS. BBS designs and engineers everything.
BBS makes their own blanks, they melt their own
alloy, they don't buy anything.
They kind of like, they do it all themselves.
And for the brand, there's really only two major
ways that they go into making wheels.
Now, for our case we're gonna talk about the
forging ones because these either they have
dye-forged blanks, or they've produced their own
blanks, but lets jump into the
first one, dye-forged blanks.
So, dye-forging is insanely expensive
and they only do it for exclusive partnerships.
A good example of this would be like
when BBS partnered with the Ford GT.
- [Alex] To produce a wheel that was just as good as
the carbon fiber counterpart but not as, uh,
as finicky as the carbon fiber wheel would
be to a Ford GT consumer. So, BBS was like,
"sure, but" and when on their way to do just that.
So from there engineering takes these ideas and
feedback from Ford and they make a render.
They send the render to Ford. Ford then reviews
it and asks for re-tooling and reviews
and a whole bunch of different things.
Not maybe a fan, they want this they want that.
If you can imagine a brand like Ford being
picky, imagine that communication back and forth.
But once its approved they do make a mock wheel.
They will then go to produce a sample wheel,
which will mill out the wheel from scratch
and ship it to them for approval.
Once all approved, they can then make the actual
tool that allows them to stamp out the wheel from
the metal. Once the dye-forged blank is actually
created, which has the design forged into it,
then it goes into spinning. Now, that's the key
difference, is that the design is actually like
forged into what they plan on making which is kind of
weird, but when you think about it in comparison
its the way that they make everything just work
better. This actually ends up cutting down
waste and time, and BBS likes to go into investing
into their own tooling when they go into making these
wheels because its really expensive.
The RSGT dye-forged wheels is an insanely
expensive wheel molds. To create a dye-forged
blank is as much as 100,000 dollars just per part.
But the 2010 GT3 per part number, their forged
wheel blank is 200,000 dollars, for just the front and back
for the Ford GT. So, for after market forged
applications, they'd have to make like 10 to 12
different tools, which is millions upon millions
of dollars and initial McScrooge dollars.
Because I just think about having that much money
and I just figure it would be like, I don't know,
something that's not real. But that's where it gets
tough though because BBS doesn't like making wheels
just to make wheels. It has to have a purpose.
For example, when they're doing an after market
wheel for Porsche, they need to know exactly
what they're doing, why they're doing it,
how they're doing it, when are they gonna
introduce the product, how they're gonna introduce
the product, they need to know how many percentages
of Porsche owners are gonna buy the after market
wheels, how many of them are gonna pick a BBS
out of that, they wanna make sure that those that
they're producing the wheel for are
exactly what they would want, and its just
like, they just want it, they just want it
nice and perfect. I mean, that's pretty much
what it is. And if the market isn't big enough
to justify the few million dollars in molds
or dye-forging, they ain't touching it because
BBS is very careful with how they make the investment
for new products and for new markets.
The second way that they make their wheels
is what allows them to make new designs
without being overly invested just in molds,
and that's through their own standard blanks.
But even that has a heavy risk involved because
the molds are all theirs. So, has BBS made
new wheels? Yes, they have. They've made 8 of them
to be exact, all for after market modification.
And they actually made two more of them that
were forged in magnesium for the Porsche
automotive racing enthusiasts, that, if you
really want to get into the technical information,
they don't just randomly start on fire
because they coated them with a whole bunch
of really good stuff, and now they're like,
they're making the magnesium forged stronger,
but that's not really our market, so we're gonna
cut it right there. But they are really neat.
I mean if you like neat stuff. Would be good
for you to know. What we did learn is that
BBS is very specific about what they do.
Is it fair to say that BBS doesn't make new
wheels? Probably not. But I said it,
and they were like you are... you're a guy
there, guy. And I was like yeah I'm a guy, and then
we talked about it, and now I'm here.
So, the wheels being made are more oriented
towards the racing at the performance market
with the others providing, as BBS would say, real
solutions for the daily driver of those
that purchase motor sport wheels from us.
In all, they're still doing really... they're
still doing a lot of stuff. The question is,
is how much do we see in our angle, from our
point of view, from predominantly a car show scene?
And that's where it can get a little tricky.
But either way, BBS is a brand that doesn't
take anything lightly, especially wheels.
That would probably explain why people love
the brand so much. So, with that being said,
which BBS wheels do you wish they would bring back?
I keep telling them to just bring me back the RS,
or the LM, or something and just make it in big
boy sizes for everybody to lo and behold.
Jessie's probably staring at me like I'm a
little weird, but drop it in the comments below
and if you're looking for some BBS wheels, head
on over to Fitmentindustries.com to check them
out. We got a link below too if that's your thing.
I'm Alex with Fitment Industries, and we will
see you later, peace.