White walls. What's up with the Widths?

[Jwawhite]

Well, thinking about White walls on Frank.

Reviewing the different manufacturers, Diamond, Coker, who else?

There appears to be different white wall widths.

Question: What was the stock width? Why different widths? Preferences? Style changes?

Thinking about Diamond tires, less costly at this time.

[V8 Bob]

IMO, DiamondBack offers the best vintage/specialty tires, starting with their own Aurburn Deluxe and Premium series, or the various regular production tires they modify with many options available.


White wall width varied throughout the years, starting full wide in the '20s/'30s and ending very thin in the 60s. White wall width should reflect the theme or era of your car, imo. Wide whites on a muscle car and skinny whites on a pre-war car are two examples that (may ) look out of place.

[V8 Bob]

Delete

[Daves55Sedan]

In the mid fifties, Fomoco contracted with firestone for their tires. The OEM '55/56 tires offered during tose years were; 670x15 and 710x15's with 2-3/4" wide whitewalls (on premium cars). Last time I looked at Coker' s ads, they were still selling bias-ply duplicates of these using Goodrich molds
Now you can select radial tires made to the OEM measurements of the original tires (28" - 30" with 4-12" tread width) made by American classic and they have the 2-3/4" wide whitewalls too.
In the early 1960's most tire mfrs went to a narrow whitewall except for high luxury models like cadillac, Lincoln. Those cars were marketed with semi-wide whites but they were only 1-3/4" - 2" wide whites.
If you are buying a single replacement tire for your classic car, the vendor assumes you are getting the same manufacturer and tire part # you already have on the car. I would recommend doing that also since different brands are manufactured of different specs, have slightly different outside diameters and different tread patterns. All these will handle differently. Every mfr in the world recommends NOT mixing tires of different brands on the same car.
If you are replacing all your tires, just order four of the same brand and part # and you will get 4 tires with identical white-walls.
But do yourself a favor and don't buy Coker Classic tires. They are junk and wont last long at all.
Some years back, I put modern radial tires on my '55 Fairlane sedan. I put Vanderbilt P205/75R15's on the front and Firestone P215/75R15's on the back, but they have the exact same whitewall width. From a distance, the front and back look identical. Yes I broke the tire mfrs golden rule about mixing tires, but I would never put two different brands on the front as that might throw the alignment off and I wouldn't put two different brands on the back because that might throw tracking off, which would also affect 4-wheel alignment.

[KULTULZ]

Here's an information source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewall_tire

[dmsfrr]

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What's up with the Widths?

The wide whitewalls do look better on cars from the 50's but their prices are quite high.

Depending on the car and the look the owner is going for, and the choice of aftermarket wheels or wheel cover options... a narrower whitewall or even a blackwall tire may be preferable in the eyes of the owner.

I went with a narrow whitewall for two reasons, mostly related to the fact that currently available tires age-out after 6 to 8 years and tire shops won't service them after that time.

Very good quality narrow whitewall tires can be found for approx $75 each. The wide whitewalls start at approx $200 each and go well up from there.
Most collector cars are driven only a couple thousand miles per year at best.
Throwing approx $1000 worth of like-new looking wide whitewall tires in the dumpster after 6 to 8 years might be hard to do.
.

[KULTULZ]

I had a 1973 RANCHERO GT (eighties) with MAGNUM 500 factory wheels. I put GOODYEAR whitewalls on it as it seemed nothing else would look correct. It was out of style and not HI-PO but it surely looked good (to me).

That is one car I truly miss (351-CJ - FMX).

[JeffB2]

Or you buy a nice quality tire for less and do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whPWWn85LDE Check some lowrider shops in your area.