Antique & Classic Cars Blog

“Wouldn’t it be cool if….” How many inventions get underway with this simple inquiry?

Because most cars today are not handmade but mass produced by the thousands or millions, the car-loving driver is always on the lookout for ways to make the 89,452nd one produced look unique.

Wheels are one obvious way, with “big” being the operative term in recent years. The wider the rim, the lower the tire’s profile until eventually you can’t really tell one type of tire from another… until somebody at Michelin said, “wouldn’t it be cool if…”

Their see-through tires have a bit in common with a spoked wheel in that there is ample space to look through when the tire is still. Set it in motion and the open spaces blur together, all but erasing the supportive components from view.

Will also be cool when someone makes a tire the other sort of see-thru, where we look directly through a translucent material, rather than between tire components–i.e., a tire of translucent rubber. Tire chemists will no doubt come up with one, if they haven’t already. The trick will be making all of the tire’s components in look-through material.

These Michelin meats were developed several years ago. Haven’t seen any on the road yet, nor some searching on their site pull them up. More R&D must lie between “wouldn’t it be cool” and market release.

(Thanks to jb for bringing up these unusual tires.)

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 8:52 am and is filed under Car parts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.