Since its cold and snowing I am in the ba*****t building models,I picked up a 40 Ford coupe which I was originally plannning on making a custom but I like hotrods better. Did anyone back in the 50s have full hub caps on a hot rod or were they usually the small caps,I do have plenty of the 50s small car magazines but they are in the room with the womans birds and they have been put away for the night so I cant go in there and disturb them so can any help me out tonight since I wont be able to look untill I get home tomorrow after work..
Yes, lots of them had full wheelcovers If you go to google images and type in 1950s hot rods, you'll find plenty of vintage photos of hot rods with full wheel covers. Lots of junk, too, but enough real old photos to give you an idea about what was used.
Check these out....full wire wheel accessory hubcps on a bad *** little hot rod and a period ad for them too...I was lucky enough to find a NOS set for an old custom I am trying to restore....
Hell ya! we didn't have rows of custom billet wheels and mags were Magnesium and way to expensive. painted wheels cost about 79 cents, wheel covers you just had to go to a nice neighborhood with a screw driver, Note: not everyone stole hub caps. some people just bought stolen hub caps
Check it out.... http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=536768&highlight=hot+rods+hubcaps
I forgot about google images but now that I am home frome work I dug out the box of the small magazines and will do some research but they are not going back in the room with the birds so I can look at them after they have been put away for the night. Right now I am torn between chrome reverse and whitewalls with no caps or the full caps with whitewalls so it looks like I need to decide early 50s or late 50s/early 60s.
Here's a bunch of early car book covers with pics of rods with full wheel covers.Granted some are Moon discs.
I have caddy sombreos,unknown 3 bar spinners and single bar spinner hubcaps to use for the early to mid 50s period. I will need to order some whitewalls but will take a few weeks to arrive so I will do all I can untill they show up,now remember this is not a real car I am building but a 1/25 scale 40 Ford coupe that I want to look period correct. I also have a 36 Ford 3 window coupe coming that I am also going to do in a 50s style but it will only need the wheels changed.
I looked through all the small magazines and only found 3 40 hotrods and 2 had small caps and the other had none,it seems like most of the fenderless hotrods had full covers but I was dissappointed in not seeing many 40s that were not customs. I still have a stack of the slightly newer larger magazines to go through.
My take on dominant (but never exclusive!) wheel styles: WWII--early fifties: Small hubcaps, often spiffed with trim rings and chrome inners (as on a loaded '40 Ford). Moon discs for lakes look, mags of actual magnesium were exclusively for the very well heeled rodder. Ford wires for the impoverished, 1950's Detroit or Borrani wires for some of the rich. Later fifties...full covers, generally the same ones that were popular on customs...a few entirely aftermarket, most the best liked OEM types (usually in JC Whitney clone), some run as used by detroit, some modified with spinners, bullets, etc. Early sixties...chrome reverse, centers either as is or adorned with bullets, Mini-moons, or candy paints. Plain steels for racer look. Mags still made out of magnesium, $$$. '62-5 period, modern "mags" became almost mandatory, now made of aluminum and/or steel, much cheaper. Rods pretty much obsolete, cars were ether '55 Chevies or brand new super stockers, those without "mags" went to the alternate superstock racer look, with big and little plain steelies, some with spin-indicator paint jobs to emulate the real race cars.
The Jalopy Journal
