Hot Rods Atlas white walls

Any interest in these old wide whites have 4. They were in a dark basement the rubber is soft no weather checking at all I did a quick soap and water scrub look used but not much mounted on 5 X 4 1/2 rims

 

A popular tire for road racers and sports rods post WWII. You might want to repost this on the “specials” thread.

 

Atlas was Standard Oil's house brand. We used to sell them at the station I worked at in 1964; they might be that old.

 

There is some show car that doesn't get driven on the roads that needs those.

Those are 60's tires but back in the 70's in Waco Texas the circle track guys who ran at Heart-O-Texas speedway hunted those tires for their dirt track cars like crazy, as long as they had rubber left on them and the cord didn't show they wanted them as the rubber was soft and sticky.
I wouldn't run down the road at 70 on them but they are right for a period correct car that doesn't actually see road miles. If the trailer count at the Vintiques show at Yakima last week is any indication about half the cars at Vintiques were trailer queens.

 

The 102 year old woman owner of the house where found her husband owned a Standard station he died in 1967

 

I haven't seen one of those for a looong time... Introduced in the mid '50s and targeted at drivers in wet/icy conditions. I suppose it could be considered as the first 'rain tire'. As noted, they quickly became the 'poor mans' race tire, even at the drag strip as a 'cheater' tire. But they didn't wear worth a damn on dry pavement so were gone by the very early '60s. Sold by Atlas Supply company, which was formed/owned jointly by the various Standard Oils (NJ, Ohio, California, etc, etc) so they could sell a product with a nationwide warrantee, something regional oil companies couldn't offer. Atlas designed their own tires and had them built to spec by one of the other tire companies. They were a good value tire up to the very early '70s, but their first radial was an unmitigated disaster. Forced to pull it off the market after one year due to mass failures, they lost their ass and reputation.

I see that the name has been sold to a Chinese company trying to enter the US market. No idea who sells them...

 

A few years back I joked on a post that Coker should repop these in a more modern rubber. I’d prefer black walls, but wide whites would do reversed. Or not. Anyone recall that famous series of Old Yeller / Ol’ Yaller home-built, nailhead powered specials that frequently ran these tires with WWW out? Those tires were just as sticky in either variety.

 

Anybody remember the Atlas Plycron? It's stuck in my memory because the Standard station I worked at sponsored my bowling team, aptly named The Plycronics. I kid you not.

 

Atlas had two lines, Plycron and Bucron. The Bucron was the softer rubber and the one preferred for racing. EJ Potter ran them on his V8 motorcycle because the tires had a tread wear warrantee and they would be replaced free of charge for premature wear. He would mount them on his tow car and take the to the nearest Standard station.

 

I used to dig those out of the Les Schwab tire dump and run them on the rear of my '61 Falcon with '57 312 Y block for back road drag racing in '70 to '73! Someone challenged me to a race I'd run home and throw on the Bucrons!
Never lost a race!

Dave

 

Sounds like a HAMB relay from the PNW across 90 to Blue Earth or Albert Lee MN for a hand off is in order.

 

I'd buy 2 if interested

 

Back in the 60's we used to get them out of the "old tire" pile behind the Esso Station and finish burning the tread of on the strip. Nothing smoked on burnouts like a Bucron.

 

Best 60’s Drag race rear tire for pure stock EVER. Didn’t wear for s**t but could hook up a 409 and break axles and rear ends..

 

They made more than just those two. In the '50s they sold the 'Cushionaire' which was above the Plycron. After they discontinued the Bucron, they came out with a 'budget' tire (the name escapes me now...) in limited sizes. The VW size wore like iron (40K miles wasn't unheard of), sold a ton of those. Then the Plycron II, a bias-belted 78 series and the top-of-the-line, the 70 series bias-belted HP. Initially sold as a redline, they missed the boat as everyone else had white letters by then. They quickly switched to a white line. These also wore extremely well, I know of one guy who got 80K out of a set. But the one big failing of their tires was that while they wore well, they weren't so hot in slippery conditions, which may have been the original reasoning for the Bucron. I had some HPs and they were spooky in the rain.

They also sold a long-wearing light truck tire, basically a slightly redesigned Firestone Transport 110. Same issue with those, you could get stuck on a flat lawn if it had dew on it....

 

We sold them at the enco station i worked at in the 60's