What's the need for larger wheels

[steve]

I guess I missed the meeting where there was a need to increase wheel size. Going back to my stone age car ownership I had been brought up on 15" wheels with fat tires. With the present 14" on my 308 although tires are getting difficult to get it looks like a balanced fit. Even the 16" replacements look OK but as the trend goes to 17 , 18 , 29 , 22 I think it starts to look like wagon wheels. Now I can understand the argument about strength for track use but for the avg. driver it doesn't make a difference. To me it starts to make cars look like pimp mobiles and takes away from the style of the car. Just my taste but as they get bigger and chrome it looks ridicules. Any thoughts on this.

[Racer86]

Race cars went to the larger diameter wheels so they could use larger brake rotors. That is the only performance reason to go bigger in diameter. On the street, its just wheel jewerly. Plus some of the 18- 19 -20 -22 inch wheels are VERY heavy and will reduce the 0 to 60 times and also add to the braking distance. I see many SUV's with 20 inch wheels and 12 inch brake rotors, looks really dumb to me. I am waiting for the lawyers to discover the extra stopping distance with the larger wheels, and start the law suits. If a person wanted to go to the larger Diameter wheels, I would insist that they also do the brake upgrade to larger rotors and calipers to return the stopping distance back to normal. And don't even think of spinners! Those things are dangerious and have caused accidents when people thought that the car with spinners was still moving, and slammed on their brakes causing rear end collisions.

[mwr4440]

I have to agree with you.

I put 16" REPOs from Superformance on my 81 308GTSi (when I find some OEM QV 16"s I'll get them). They look quite close to original but you still have to get used to them. My wife noticed the diff immediately (I didn't tell her I changed them) and she doesn't know beans about cars.

The 14" tires are just too hard to find and way TOO expensive. Mine is a driver, not a show car and I cannot justify replacing the 14"s every couple of years at a bizillion $US (largest number I could think of) a pop.

Putting anything larger and different in design on a 308 especially, almost never looks better than OEM IMHO. I am definately not a purest by any means, but I do think that Enzo just plain "got it right the 1st time." All the other models look extremely good with their OEM wheels too (except the Enzo; I think it needs (wheels) help). OEM wheel design matched to body styling for each model thru the years, is a Ferrari stong point.

mwr4440

[Racer86]

What did your wife notice about the car after the 16's went on it? interesting that she did notice something!

[ferrarispider]

I must admit that i did go after market with my old 328 because i never really liked the standard alloys and i wanted more rubber on the road. The standard units looked to small for the body IMO. So i opted for a set of 18in 288/F40 style split rims with wider rubber. But yet i liked the standard rims on my Testarossa and would not have dreamed of putting on aftermarket ones because it looked right.
Also on my 355 spider i think the wheels are great and would not change them for aftermarket rims due to again IMO there are no wheels that are better than the standard units out there. The same goes with the 360, it looks right IMO.
So i guess its all in the individual eye
Oh and i am posting pictures of my past and pressent cars to add a little colour to the thread.

[gandalfthegray]

I agree on the 355. The stock wheels are perfect. The 348 is a different story. I bought a 90 model recently and I can't stand the look of the factory wheels. I wish there were more choices in the aftermarket, but there isn't much.