Tuesday 9 October 2012

Impressive, becomes impressive mistake..

Directional wheels.
Directional.. bloody.. wheels..

Usually a bit of a compromised design, as what company can afford to make both lefts and rights of the same wheel?
You end up with the same wheel left and right, and are left to just live with having two backwards wheels.
This is the case for almost every manufacturer, and i can easily think of examples from - Toyota, Nissan, Ford - even Porsche!

BUT. occasionally. when the planets line up.. etc; manufacturers have produced LEFT's and RIGHT's of the samn damn wheel.
Honda definitely did it with the 3rd generation Prelude, and here is clearly Nissan having a go with the R31 Skyline TI..
.. with, not so much succcess.

somehow or another, in a photo that I'm sure MANY people put a solid Friday arvo's worth of effort into, they managed to completely miss what was such a beautiful little detail.
The front left wheel in that picture is actually a right wheel. We can only hope that car actually has a left on the right, as if Nissan sent them out the door with odd numbers of left/rights... well.. wow. ha


Interesting thought - if you are going to have true directional wheel sets, what do you do the spare as? :)



6 comments:

  1. good eye! I never even thought about that detail before. After seeing this post, I had to dig up photos of my old MA70 Toyota Supra which came with, what is infamously loathed by the MKIII Supra enthusiast community, as the "sawblades" which came on the 86-90 versions. low and behold, there were indeed right and left versions. Totally made my day. The fate of my sawblades was met at the local recycling yard, after I got a set of to the 16" 5 spoke wheels that came on the 91-92s. I think I got like $50 bucks for each wheel, because I remember leaving the yard with a big smile that day. Sawblades couldn't be given away at that time!

    Awesome site by the way. I will be back!

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    1. Appreciate Toyota's effort there. The Supra was money back in the day - my AW11 from the same era (retailing for less than 2/3rds the cost of a MA70 when new) had one-sided directional teardrop wheels...
      Oh the shame.


      Cheers!

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  2. Did someone (years ago) say directional wheels? I give you the C4 Corvette's "Salad Shooters" and "Sawblades"

    https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=655&q=corvette+salad+shooters&oq=corvette+salad&gs_l=img.3.0.0l3j0i24l4.1500.4085.0.5150.14.10.0.3.3.0.457.1124.0j2j2j0j1.5.0.msedr...0...1ac.1.61.img..6.8.1127.5ZDtSgqT1Fc

    https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=655&q=corvette+salad+shooters&oq=corvette+salad&gs_l=img.3.0.0l3j0i24l4.1500.4085.0.5150.14.10.0.3.3.0.457.1124.0j2j2j0j1.5.0.msedr...0...1ac.1.61.img..6.8.1127.5ZDtSgqT1Fc#tbm=isch&q=corvette+sawblades

    https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=655&q=corvette+salad+shooters&oq=corvette+salad&gs_l=img.3.0.0l3j0i24l4.1500.4085.0.5150.14.10.0.3.3.0.457.1124.0j2j2j0j1.5.0.msedr...0...1ac.1.61.img..6.8.1127.5ZDtSgqT1Fc#tbm=isch&q=corvette+35th+wheels

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ...Someone sure bloody did..! So great...

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  3. Honda crx nailed it in 88! Civic later flubbed it with only one type of plastic wheel cover for both sides.

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