America, The Land of the Ugly Wheels

When I was young, we tried to do things to our cars that improved the looks, handling and power. A good set of Craiger mags, a Holley four barrel carb, rolled and pleated seats, things like that. You could make a '56 Chevy look very sharp with just a few dollars worth of accessories. Now, kids paint their cars colors never found in nature, or any where else for that matter, slap Conestoga wagon wheels on their cars and they think they are ready, even though the car's headliner is so ragged its hanging down so low that it drapes over the driver's head like a tent .

My first car was a black '53 Chevy 210 coupe. She was way sharp. I had chrome reverse rims with 8.75 x 15 Goodyear Tiger Paws, the tires with the narrow red walls, front and rear, Thunderbird bucket seats, a Foxcraft floor shifter and a Thunderbird center console sporting a giant Sun tach. She was powered a 327 ci Chevy engine bored out by my Daddy and me to 348 ci putting out about 350 HP with a Cheetah four barrel and electric fuel pump. She had dual Thrush mufflers with cut-outs, torsion bars and Chevy truck coil springs in the front end. This car looked good and would rip up the pavement on a summer Saturday night outside Kent's Drive-in. The guys were envious and the girls loved the car.

I remember a fellow in a hopped up '56 Ford challenged me to race him from Thomson to Dearing, about 10 miles one night. The winner would get ten dollars. That was a considerable sum in the early 1960's. His Ford was powered by a 292 V8 with an automatic transmission. It was painted flat black with flames just behind the wheel wells. His car looked bad and sounded badder. I won't mention his name since he still lives around here and has held a grudge ever since.

We took off with the wave of a handkerchief held by a pretty little thing named Cindie (that's how she spelled it). The Ford managed to keep up with me through first and second gears, but when I shifted into third at about 4500 RPM and the rear tires barked, the Ford started backing up. At the bridge about three miles out of town I was running well past what the speedometer would show. I had a good ten car lengths on the Ford. By Cap McGahee's store I could just see his headlights. At the Dearing city limits I stopped and had time to get out and open my hood to let the engine cool before he pulled up. I had beat the Ford by about two minutes in ten miles. Not bad for then or now. I got the ten bucks and bragging rights for the next week. Ah, the good old days were surely good enough!

Well, times sure have changed. Now rice burners are the hot cars and America has become the "Land of the Ugly Wheels." Today's kids think that putting 29 inch wheels and rubber band tires on a '79 Oldsmobile Cutlass makes this born butt-ugly car look any better? I have seen cars around my town that must have been pulled directly from a junkyard and put on the road. They puff out a trails of blue oil smoke, and sport thousands of dollars worth of enormous chrome wheels and spinners. The wheels are worth ten times what the cars cost. It is hard for me to believe that someone actually sat down and designed an accessory automobile wheel that will not fit under the fenders of any car made. Plus the wheels make the cars they are installed on look very much like old fashioned circus wagons.

I blame it on the educational system. Kids nowdays are not taught any economics. These kids have no taste or sense of proportion. It seems fine to a modern kid to spend three-thousand dollars on ugly wheels for a three-hundred dollar car. Today, it's all bigger is better. Now, I hear that stores are actually RENTING these ugly wheels and tires so that cash strapped mentally deficient people can put ugly wheels on their cars. Isn't that comparable to renting your underwear? This is indicative of the present decline and fall of American society. It has to be.