A Red Hot Market: Knowing the Options Can Help Deliver a Winning Look
It all starts innocently enough. A couple of car nuts decide to get together on a weekend to show off their rides. Before long, it becomes an organized event. Streetrods and muscle cars are seeing a huge growth in popularity and will continue to grow. Traditionally a market for the over-50 crowd, you may be
Winter Harvest: Dealers Can Plant the Winter Tire Seed All Year Round
It wasn’t too long ago that some in this industry were ready to declare the winter tire dead. Popular in Europe and Canada, sales in the U.S. had been, at best, flat for the previous couple of winters. A few suggested that advances in standard passenger and performance offerings were enough to cope with slush,
Profit in Steel Wheels?: Advances in Steel-Alloy Wheels Can Mean Profitable Upgrades
You read that right. There’s profit in steel wheels – if you offer a wheel that looks like chrome but is priced like steel. Over the last several years, you’ve probably noticed a few OE wheels that were basically steel but had a chrome-plated ‘skin’ applied over the base. Most were simple in design and
Size and Safety: How Ultra-Large Wheels Impact Stopping Power, Load Capacity
When we talk about a life-or-death situation, many times, the old adage, “Every second counts” comes to mind. If we apply that same principle to our vehicles, especially when braking, we might say, “Every inch counts.” How many times have you had to brake hard to avoid – or attempt to avoid – hitting something?
Muscle Mass: Pitch Lightweight Wheels to Customers Wanting to Save Horsepower
Horsepower. You hear the word all the time. We apply it to nearly everything from automobiles to vacuum cleaners. Ever wonder where it came from? The term “horsepower” was coined by an engineer named James Watt. He lived from 1736 to 1819 and is most famous for his work on improving the performance of steam
Maxed Out?: Size Race Slows, But Fashion vs. Function Questions Remain for Dealers
For a few years, the tire and wheel industries resembled the Cold War nuclear arms race – every year, someone rolled out a bigger weapon. It started with eye-popping, wheel-well-stretching 20-inch wheels and tires and progressed to the 2004 SEMA Show, where gigantic 28-inchers were every where. A sort of dÉtente has settled in, if
Badge of Honor: Tire/Wheel Certification Offers Customer-Capturing Credibility
What is your impression of someone who has a professional certification? Admiration? Perhaps respect for the achievement or recognition? When you’re being treated for a common cold, do you go to a first-year med student because it isn’t a life threatening illness? Of course not! You see a licensed professional, such as a doctor or
Knowledge is Power: Learning About Cutting-Edge Wheel Production Can Boost Sales
As the automotive industry incorporates more and more technology into every part of a vehicle, have you thought about how this technology is being used in the wheel industry? Let’s face it: You can have the most advanced drivetrain, telematics and fuel system known to man, but without a tire and wheel, it’s just a
Action and Reaction: Can Private Brands Survive a Shakeout?
When evaluating the private brand tires you carry, ask yourself one critical question: Can they survive a shakeout? “We are a pull through,” says Pat McLaughlin, president of SURE Tire, a cooperative buying group for private brand tires, about his business. “We can’t push anything into the market. We have to trail.” Reactionary. That’s the
Let’s Get Vertical
For those of you who have been involved in off-road racing, hill climbing and rock crawling, you know what I’m talking about. And for those of you who think that drifting is the only motorsport showing growth, I have something to tell you! Over the last few years, the popularity of all manner of off-road
Patterns & Offsets: More New Bolt Pattern/Offset Combinations Have Emerged
More new bolt pattern/offset combinations have emerged in the last few years than in the last 20 years combined. Remember when there were only a dozen common bolt patterns, and almost everything had a standard offset? Oh, how I long for those days. Today, though, we have double that number, and it seems we are
Wheel Anatomy: Part III
In the last of a series of three articles about how different types of wheels are made, we now turn our focus to three-piece designs. What are three-piece wheels? And, what is so great about them? As the name states, this type of wheel is an assembly of three components. Like a two-piece wheel, the