- So it took a lot out of me to not make my fingers
do this for the entire episode of Wheel History
but I just have to make one Italian joke.
That's a spicy meatball.
- [Mario] Hello.
- Hey guys what's going on it's Alex from Fitment Industries
and today we're gonna be talking
about none other than OZ Racing.
So this was probably the most talked about in the comments
so we hope you're ready
and we're just gonna delve right into it.
OZ Racing was founded in 1971 by Silvano and Pietro Zen.
Silvano has a last name, I think it's Oselladore
but I don't really know how to pronounce it correctly.
However the last names, both of those form OZ Racing.
And their game plan was just extremely simple,
to make racing wheels.
They just have always existed in that realm
and for good reason.
Their entire heritage of their company has been
formed around the racing community.
And they've done really really well.
Founded in Rossano Veneto, OZ Racing
has just always stuck around that culture and heritage
of making Italian racing wheels
for anybody that really wanted them.
So debut the first wheel that OZ Racing made in 1971,
it was god ugly.
It went on a Mini Cooper, but it won races.
OZ started to get it's name out
by just winning stuff almost all the time.
The two brothers, they're not brothers.
The two partners ended up realizing that they
could continuously make products for different companies
and different wheel manufacturers because it works.
So they went from just making it for Mini Coopers
to pretty much everything.
And OZ began to dabble in
Italian motorcycle wheel manufacturing.
Why? Well because they're Italian,
what the hell do you expect?
OZ's like the Italian version of Air Lift in the 70s.
If there's anything that OZ could be involved in
they were involved in it,
especially if it was a motor sports scene.
And it worked out very well for them.
In fact once they became a public capital company in 1978
with an annual investment of 210 million lira,
which is around 50 million dollars,
at the time, they were like on to something.
And it was at this point that they really became
a powerhouse in the Italian aftermarket wheel game.
In 1984 OZ Racing got a facelift, by who?
By none other than Claudio Bernoni,
If you don't know who that is, you're a pleb.
(record scratch) Can't believe I said pleb to a camera.
It was on the thing that I wrote
and I instantly regret saying it.
Cladio's goal here was just to make sure that
OZ stayed true to it's nature and they did fairly well
over the next 34 years they won pretty much every
single racing style automotive event in the world.
They have around a hundred
international world championships for their brand.
And if you're a Millennial and you consider
probably how many times they entered into
one of these events, that's like 600 participation trophies.
In 1989 OZ Racing truly began to realize
that they had a following.
They had a cult of people that loved their brand,
but unless you were Michael Schumacher
you could never really afford racing forged magnesium wheels
for your daily, or for your autocross or HPD vehicle
just because of the price point.
So OZ decided to then go into just a
normal commercial market and start showing these
wheels that an average Nancy and Bob
could probably buy, if they chose to.
OZ Racing from there began to grow internationally.
They opened up a Japan and Deutschland in 1993.
They continued to grow in the US market,
and of course their European market was already solidified.
They got involved everywhere they possibly could
because that's what they needed to do to grow.
Now you have to remember there are other companies
out there that were trying to do the same thing.
If you remember BBS was also a company
that was bred out of heritage and racing,
but the biggest problem that they faced
was that they grew too much and ended up having
to declare bankruptcy twice to re-solidify
and re-angle their business towards something
that they actually wanted to fulfill
instead of the market that they were heading towards.
You see, OZ Racing didn't have that issue
because they thought about those things so early in the game
that they knew that they needed to just stay true
to what they were, and still have a couple extra legs
on their bar stool to make sure that the company
was profitable, solidified, and that it wouldn't break
if they had a rough year or two.
From 1998 OZ got their ISO 9001 certification
across their entire wheel line up,
which was unheard of at the time
especially coming from the German board of implications
because it was so tough to get that,
by the time they ended up receiving that document,
it was big news.
Now for today's day and age it really isn't,
because it's just so standard,
but to get that back in 1998 was a huge
monumental success for OZ Racing,
because it allowed them to produce wheels
that a lot of other manufacturers
weren't actually legally allowed to do.
And things for OZ continued to look good,
they had a manufacturing plant
for metal work cylinder magnesium wheels.
They had a manufacturing plant for forged wheels.
They had a manufacturing plant for their lightwheel wheels.
Their stuff was being made in Italy.
Their wheels weren't breaking.
Everything was going well for OZ Racing.
Now this is usually where I'd say
that they declared bankruptcy or somebody died,
or something happened to the company
or it liquidated or somebody sent out an Instagram tweet
that was terrible and not fun to deal with,
but that never happened.
OZ Racing just continued to do well.
And finally OZ decided to get involved
in the aftermarket wheel community.
And they started it off with a pretty good wheel design
called the Super Turismo, which if you didn't know
was an ode to their Super Leggara wheel design
that they wanted to give to the community
for them to use on their vehicles.
It was just a normal wheel, it was a lightweight wheel
and it looked absolutely killer.
Pretty much on any hot hatch.
A lot of people of forget that OZ is a brand that is
pretty much angled towards those sport compact cars
or cars that feature or go well
with a multi-spoked style design.
And OZ continued to do that until
they essentially just ran out of designs.
And if you're wondering if OZ makes good designs
I would say that they do,
because in 2007 OZ won best wheel of the year
by Autobuild on their Botticelli III.
I didn't even know you could win best wheel of the year.
I didn't even know that was a thing.
But apparently it is, because OZ Racing won it,
so congratulations guys on winning one of one.
I don't even know if you had competition,
but if you did I'm pretty sure it was less to zero people.
And from 2007 to 2017 and to this day even
OZ's history is just littered with success
in their racing pedigree.
They just don't seem to quit.
And even now they're still partnered
with companies like Ferrari and Audi
in the aftermarket wheel game
for Formula 1 racing, for everything in-between
to be their supplier until probably forever.
And that's what makes OZ so cool.
Everything that OZ touches they do it with a passion.
Their wheel line and how they market themselves
and how they are proud of their selves
and take pride in everything that they do.
You even go to their website and they tell you
every single thing that they've won or done
since the beginning of their history.
And it's very cool to see a lot of the tech
that they use, they use it across their entire brand.
OZ's not shy to show that.
And that's why companies like OZ own other companies
like MSW and Breyton and Sparco,
because they just know
what they can do with those companies,
and it allows them to hit different markets
so that they can make some extra cash.
OZ is a good company and as much as we'd like to say
to say poor things about them
which we never really do in this series,
OZ's just a company that has a lot of history.
And I'm sure that if you're buying a set,
you're buying a pretty good quality wheel.
On top of the fact that they don't tend to bend or break
they do take a damn beating considering that
OZ does all of their testing right in house.
OZ's a company that just is going to be there
for a long time.
And unlike other companies that were founded in the 70s
I really don't think this one's gonna go away.
Just simply for the fact that they've done so well
with keeping the company alive
through racing, through motor sports, through acquisitions,
and of course, their cast wheel line
and their rotary forged wheel line.
Absolutely killer.
That's everything that we have on OZ Racing.
Let us know what you guys would like to see next,
and drop a comment below with what you'd like us
to talk about or not talk about.
Of course I'm Alex from Fitment Industries,
I just got new glasses, my pink face is not as pink anymore.
Be sure to check out our website if you want to
look at some wheels tires suspension or air lift,
we have 30,000 wheels and tires.
Www.fitmentindustries.com I'm Alex from Fitment Industries.
I'll say Fitment Industries one more time.
Fitment Industries. Fitment Industries.