Vintage catalogs and reader submissions are great, but every once in a while we come across some really unique and interesting resources.  Someone recently advised me to check through old US Patents for vintage wheel design information.  With great excitement and hope, I dug in, did some research… and poured through literally thousands of archives.

I imagined that I would find documents for ground breaking wheel designs, like maybe the first ever three-piece wheel, or may ground-breaking forging techniques… but alas I discovered only that Honda has earnestly been trying (like in the last two decades) to re-invent the wheel.  Good on you Honda.  If I understood half of the patents that I came across with your name on them, I might try to write about them.  I don’t understand though, and I find the idea of where we’ve been much more interesting than the idea of where we are going anyways.

In reference to that, I found four patents of interest. They all came from Giorgetto Giugiaro – Car designer of the century, and recent inductee of the Automotive Hall of Fame.  Yes… Giugiaro did things the right way, both in design and business.  There are US Patents for all prominent Giugiaro inventions and designs: some wheels included.

The fat five spoke type wheel design above came from Giugiaro, and was assigned to Italian auto accessory company Gilardini S.p.A., later Magneti Morelli.  Cromodora looked after production, and also managed JWL/VIA certifications.  The wheel appears in Japanese catalogs as the Cromodora Type Giugiaro.  and was available for sale in Japan (and presumably the USA and Europe as well)  as early as 1981.  The application for this patent was made in September of 1982.

A couple of months after, Giugiaro filed for three more patents on wheel designs that are more familiar to us. The Melber Giugiaro Scacchiera SRG, was a design that debuted in 1977 at the Torino Motor Show.  Melber (aka Nihon Melber Kabushiki Kaisha) put the design into production immediately after.

The Scacchiera SFF was a high offset version of the original Scacchiera, that was put into production in 1978.

The Igrecca come after, debuting on the Japanese market in 1980.  The Scacchiera and Igrecca patents were filed on the same day in December of 1982 however – all assigned to Melber.

The information seen here isn’t new, but it is pretty cool to see official sketches and another confirmation of the relationship that Giugiaro had with Melber.    One can wonder why these four wheels, and not some of the many others that Giugiaro had his hands on, ended up with patents related to their design.  Perhaps it was part of prepping them for consumption in the US market in particular?

For me, the greatest disappointment now, is that Japanese Patent Law doesn’t seem to accommodate anything relating specifically to “ornamental design”, and instead focuses primarily on industrial processes and manufacturing techniques.  Looking through Japanese patents only turns up things like tooling processes from Topy, construction techniques from Bridgestone, or specific reinforcing ribs for casting process from Hitachi metals.

I guess this is probably a big clue as to why the JWL standards are what they are, but maybe also why Japanese manufacturers sometimes looked to guys like Giugiaro,Giovanni Michelotti, or Andre Courreges for design help.

Southern Ways is best known for their Glids II mesh, but as this advertisement from 1979 shows, there are a whole lot of great kyusha wheels by Southern Ways.  The headline reads, “Your disk, will you change it?” As the image suggests, all six wheels pictured share the same shell design and construction.

In 1979, when three-piece wheels were still in their relative youth, the ability to swap centres around was probably little more than novelty.  Almost forty years later, this has the potential to be a game changer for collectors and treasure hunters.

While five of the six wheels pictured here are ultra-rare at best, the Glids II is an attainable find.  With a longer production run, the Southern Ways Glids II mesh is still relatively popular today.  Often it can even be found in aggressive sizes. Now, the other five wheels feel like once in a lifetime finds at best.

And yet… if you do manage to get your hands on some, rejoice in the fact that they can easily be resized to suit your tastes by mixing and matching shells with other S.W. wheels… all without fighting welds like the wheels from most other main brands will make you do.

While I understand the benefits of modular construction, even when welds are used, if a wheel can’t be taken apart and put back together with some simple tools in my garage, or even trackside, then the term “3-piece” seems a bit of a misnomer. In this ad, Southern Ways is encouraging people to take apart and swap wheel parts? They obviously understand our wheel love.

あなたのディスクは変えられますか? 
“Your disk, will you change it?”

A reader was questioning my categorization of Silver Star wheels under the Yamaco brand instead of the Enkei brand.  This explains the reason for that.  Yamaco sold a fairly wide range of accessories and parts from wheels to decal packages.  Early Yamaco wheels, like the Silver Star Three-Piece (later re-named the Laira) where all produced by Enkei, and thus have Enkei markings on them.

Another reader also found and shared this Yamaco advertisement from 1982 which shows the same wheel with a later name: Laira.  There numerous references to this wheel out there, and with light weight and aggressive sizing (5.7kg for 14 8J size) it is a sought after wheel today.

While examining my notes on this wheel though, I noticed something that hadn’t caught my attention when originally adding the wheel to the database here. Enkei produced this same wheel for someone other than Yamaco.

That someone was Ohtsu Tire, who sold the wheel as part of its Footmark line-up.  Again the model name was “Three piece.”  The only difference I can see is that the re-branded wheel used a new centre cap that featured the Footmark logo “FM”.  Thankfully it is still beautifully square!

The Footmark line-up is not one that I’ve had a chance to touch on much at all, but as I get deeper into this, I’m not only finding them hard to ignore, but also discovering new models that are unique and interesting.  They are though, some of the less known or sought after kyusha wheels.  For myself, that makes them extra exciting.

Stay Tuned.

You may not have heard of Topy Enterprises. That is forgivable. Although Topy has been producing wheels for more than 85 years, and today is a huge multi-national manufacturer, their focus has tended more towards commercial endeavours. They have served as a manufacturer for OEM application wheels (Nissan and Isuzu), as well as aftermarket wheels. Dunlop for instance, used Topy to produce most of their wheels in the seventies and eighties. Often when Topy has chosen to produce wheels of their own design, they sold and marketed them under a different name (JMW for example).

The Jovite though, stands apart as one of few wheels that clearly carries the Topy name.

It’s inexcusable, this is no joke.

She stops and stares… he’s feeling nervous tension.
This “Sassy girl” with a beautifully sharp look, versus Zoro, or even the three musketeers surely could not lose!
Her appearance is so outstanding, it’s obvious he is outmatched.
Her feet sparkling, in the gentle shine of the aluminum wheel “Jovite”.

With the right wheels, the battle always becomes a little bit easily.
Seriously… for Tennis or Jogging, you always replace your usual sneakers with dedicated sports shoes.
Here, Jovite 3-Piece wheel is how you make that choice.
You want to run comfortably. So find and get them.

 The ad clearly identifies Topy Enterprises as the manufacturer, but today the Topy Jovite is often confused. There is the fact that the Topy name is so unknown that the wheel is usually just identified as the Jovite. Jovite Toby is also frequent.  Secondly, the wheel is very very similar in appearance to one of the most popular kyusha wheels of all time: the SSR MK-III.  Often the Jovite is identified and sold as a MK-III.

SSR never ever had this much fun with their advertisements though! Or maybe SSR just never had to try this hard.

Debuting in 1980, the Jovite was a full nine years younger than the MK-III. Side by side, the differences between the wheels are noticeable, but its impossible to deny the similarity. Even the placement of JWL and VIA markings is identical. It’s also quite possible that the two wheels share the same shells. At the time, SSR supplied shells for various other wheel makers (Focus and Hayashi for example). Given the visual similarity between the MK-III shell and the Jovite shell, and the fact that no other Topy wheel that I’m aware of uses a similar shell, I think it’s quite likely that the shells are SSR parts.

The center though, is clearly not SSR. The Jovite shares the same T-E marking that is found on many Dunlop wheels, and Jovite is clearly marked in the space typically reserved for model codes. At 5.0kg for 14 6J size, the Jovite is very light in comparison to single piece cast wheels of the era, but not quite on par with the SSR MK-III that it appears to be modelled after.

Following 1980, the Jovite name evolved into a wheel line of its own. One that like JMW, had no obvious connection to Topy. That’s part of what makes this original Jovite interesting to me. It represents one of the few times that Topy stood up and said, “look at me and what I can do,” and made something that was all it’s own…

… Except for the SSR shells and copycat design???

I may understand why they disappeared back into ambiguity.

The Novan Wonder Rabbit is such a rare and unique wheel that I never imagined I’d ever find an advertisement for one.  This comes from Robbie’s Motorfan collection and an issue from 1979.  The translation reads.

By our hand,something universal, the Wonder Rabbit, is created.

This is the era for the west coast, a spot in California.
What is the new direction for eighties car supplies?
We made our decision: American Spirit!
Wonder Rabbit.
As we ponder the value of the era…

Car Supplies VOLUME 1: Wonder Rabbit – Alloy Wheels

At the time, it is certainly true that Japan was in love with the idea of American life… but in my mind, it is doubtful that the state of the Japanese auto-industry was so dire in 1979 that a yankee wannabe super rabbit was going rescue anyone from anything.  In fact, the automobile in Japan may have never been stronger.  The SA22 was the car of the decade, and the Japanese Wheel League was fully charged.  Turbo technology was spooling up.  In the USA, the EPA was killing American muscle and Chrysler needed a huge sum of cash from the US government to continue operating.  This was the first year of the McDonald’s happy meal though! Oh what highs and lows…

From stickers and markings, we know that the Wonder Rabbit was made by Enkei for Novan Internationals.  It was distributed by Chuo Jidousha aka Central Automotive Products.  Sizes that I have observed are 13 6J +13 and 13 6.5J +10 with 4H PCD114.3.  Others may have been available, but finding them now would be a serious task.

The Wonder Rabbit is a good-looking wheel, with a great name… but by all other measures, might be considered a flop.  From the usual sources, I wasn’t able to discover anything meaningful about Novan Internationals, or the Wonder Rabbit.  In wheel catalogs and articles from the era that I have seen, the Wonder Rabbit is strangely absent.  That seems like a terrible oversight, as the wheel does have some unique features compared to other four spokes of the time.  It’s doubtful that many were purchased back in 1979 and 1980.

Today the Wonder Rabbit is an ultra-rare find at best. And, as far as I can tell the Novan brand never produced anything else.  If they left behind any legacy for Kyusha lovers, this Rabbit wearing a cape and singing the praises of California might just be it.  So much for Volume 2…

It started with a long lost AE86 friend stumbling upon my very first set of kyusha wheels. These Dunlop TE-E’s were a local bargain finder discovery from 1999. They were small, and in about the same rough shape they are today… but no one else had anything like them, so I was happy to make them mine. Now in 2015, I am very happy that car friendships brought these things back into my garage for the cost of a few beers.

Only days after that, and the requisite Instagram post, a flood of inquiry came about the status of the site. So here we go again. This time, I hope that Facebook and other social media can assist with the submission of content. Currently the database has just under 500 wheels in it. The goal for 2016 is to reach 750.

I hope you’ll help. よろしく！

Not my true sentiment… it’s just an excuse.

It has been awfully dead in here lately, with no updates to the database coming for a full year. It’s time to shut it down. Thanks all for your contributions over the past decade, and my apologies to those who have inquired in the past few months and not even gotten a response. I may be back in the future, but for the time being, other things will occupy my spare time.

The website and database will stay here, but expect no updates.

よろしくお願いします。

Kyusha Shoes Banzai! The old wheel upheaval is in force.

Special thanks to DTA and Road & Track for sharing my passion.  Check it out!

You may have noticed my list of Work wheels double in the last week.  I’ve done so with the help and encouragement of Work Japan.  Exciting indeed, but I’m hoping it’s just the beginning.  Find more history on their Facebook page.  Good stuff.