I LOVE whitewall tires, but another thing that I think is lost is how the wheel covers used to be color coded to match your paint job, so you could get a powder blue convertible and have matching powder blue accented hubcaps and I think it really completed the look

In the 1980s, most tires were still whitewalls but the mechanic would ask if you wanted the whitewall or black side mounted towards the outside.

That L.A Noire anecdote was genuinely one of the coolest things I'd ever heard. Some gamer showing his grandpa a video game based on his life? Not his specific life, obviously, but what he used to do? That's cool as all hell. A great way for video games to bring people together, no matter the age-gap. And I love the fact he was still sharp enough to say "Yeah, this is pretty right...but we didn't have no fancy whitewall tires".

There are also "porta-walls". An aftermarket whitewall "insert" that is installed over the regular sidewall, and usually held in place by the bead of the tire and rim.

I think the modern day whitewall equivalent is the super low profile tire, right down to the association with pimp-mobiles. I prefer the whitewalls.

When I first got stripes on my new set of tires I was thrilled because the stripes were blue! I was then told "No! That is just a coating that is blue to protect the white wall from getting scuffed during transportation and installation." Oh.

I once Photoshopped a 2019 Dodge Challenger and added some 1958 Plymouth features onto it: the chrome side trim, fins and of course the whitewalls. I thought it looked pretty cool. Then I decided to do the same thing with my current Ford Focus MK3 station wagon and a '59 Fairlane. I can honestly say the whitewalls make such an ordinary car look special, not in a bad way.

Ed, you can go off topic whenever you want as it just makes the video more fun to watch. When I was real young people could buy "fake" whitewalls, I think they would stretch around the rim and the outer dimeter would be glued to the blackwall tire. Funny thing people can still buy them today. Thanks for your time and work

Keep in mind ALL tires are made by laying strips of rubber over each other then vulcanized. Very early white walls were made to cut cost because the black rubber was more expensive and would be a waste to use it on the sidewalls. The shift to all black was an indicator of a better tire as they had a two layer construction. Early whites even had red rubber inside. The red was used in the earliest days and then abandoned due to it having trouble with UV light. The original white/red tires would only last 200 ~500 miles before the casings would fall apart. It wasn't uncommon early on to build a white tire and fit pucks of black rubber around the outside then vulcanize for tread. White walls made the wheels look bigger even when the tires and wheels were small. The cars were huge and needed something to proportion the appearance properly. This was important in the 50's. As the wheels got bigger the white wall shrank. As cars got better proportioned the white wall fell out of favor except on luxury cars as the small wheels that they had fitted for a comfortable ride could still use a narrow stripe. White lettering became a thing to emulate drag racers and their painted on branding of their tires.

A small correction: Vulcanization has little to nothing to do with carbon black... Its pretty much heating rubber with sulphur and was invented before pneumatic tires... So in the context of car tires it was not "a new process". Its an important process in creating solid rubber and all tires including white ones were vulcanized from the beginning. And it leaves the rubber white... Black rubber is pretty much created by adding carbon to vulcanized rubber to increase durability.

Fun fact there is a part of the automotive market where whitewall tyres are still king and even requiered by law! In the Netherlands and most other European countries bicycles are equiped with tires who have a reflecting white stripe for safety reasons on the them.

Automotive designers/stylists will tell you- whitewalls increase the perceived visual diameter of the wheel-tire combination. A visually 'large' wheel fills the wheel well space in a more pleasing way, a difficult thing to do before low profile sidewall tires allowed for large diameter rims. True story!

YES i’ve never thought that someone’s gonna cover one of my favourite car features of the past in a separate video since i’m one of the firsts, Your movies are pure joy and please keep on with em

the morgan aero actually looks pretty nice with whitewalls probably because it's already kind of a throwback to vintage styling,. in fact really any car with retro styling actually does look better with whitewalls because it helps complete the vintage theme even a PT cruiser looks far more presentable with a set whitewalls

I love how you delve into these topics that interest me but I never think about, and you end up answering basically all the questions I didn't know I had.

The Hankook tire company is one of the last reputable tire companies that offer thin whitewalls at an affordable price. I believe the specific model is the Hankook Optimo tire, offered in both all black or white stripe.

There was a period in the mid 1960's to early 1970's of whitewall tires in dual stripes, tri stripes, blocks, and other patterns. My father bought a new Mercury every year back then, and the tires varied from year to year in the whitewall design.

With the trend since the 90s of making the wheels larger and larger and the sidewalls narrower and narrower, there's really not a whole lot of "wall" left to make white.

Back in the seventies I remember seeing some imitation pimp mobiles with large white plastic rings on the tires, instead of an actually white wall. They were gawdy.

Echoing the redline/blueline tyres of the 60s, the fitting of customising coloured plastic rim protectors in the tyre bead have become popular recently.

Once having had whitewalls on a '97 Buick LeSabre, one thing I discovered quickly is that whitewalls and disc brakes don't go well together. That car had disc brakes in the front, and drum brakes in the back, and the front whitewalls were always dirty. I could get them all clean and shiny, but as soon as a drove through a puddle, all that brake grime would instantly splatter all over the the whitewalls again. The whitewalls in the rear stayed cleaner much longer.

Man I love your work and all this series! So much to learn, thanks!

As a motorcyclist, I gotta say coloured stripes and white letters look fantastic. Glad to keep the sporty tradition going!

G'Day Ed, I'm an Aussie who owns a 1960 Ford Thunderbird. The car is black with a black and white interior, when I bought it there were 5 white walls on it, including the spare. I couldn't imagine it without the white walls, the car stands out as it is in Australia but I get so many comments that "The tyres are amazing". or "Those tyres look fantastic".

Yes, white walls are a lost art

They are the finishing touch of style . My 1965 Pontiac Parisienne Custom-Sport 2+2 hardtop coupe is blue teal with , ivory and black interior . She will only wear white-walls . Ultimate cruiser .

I think part of the appeal of whitewall tires is the way it fills the wheel wells, modern cars all have larger wheels and the same status affect is had from plus size wheels, cars had 14 or 15 inches then and had room to show off the tire ,this channel is great

I bought my brand new 2003 Ford Crown Victoria and indeed I opted for the Michelin symmetry white wall tires. Each time I needed new tires I always got the same ones until they were discontinued. I was much later made aware that Coker makes them!

I wonder if I can get a set of nice classic whitewalls for my all-electric Chevy Bolt EV. That would make a jaw-dropping contrast and make me love my Bolt even more. 😊

I put white wall tires w/ moon hub caps on my Geo Metro "white top" Convertible. I get a lot of people saying I have a nice, or cute, or classic looking car. I'm really thinking now about painting the rims blue to match the body, seeing how cool that looked.

Àhh, the once popular white wall tire!! This is a fun topic & you did it justice!!! 👍👍

*I've been OBSESSED with Ghostbusters ever since I was little, and I remember being amazed by the Ecto 1's whitewall tires, they looked so cool and fit the car's white color lot.*

Thanks Ed for your great video.JDS

I've always liked White walls on cars from the 50's, as it just fits them so well, and at car shows they really stick out like a sore thumb when someone does not have them on their 50's car, but modern cars not so much, but I will admit as shit as the Chrystler 300 is(mostly mechanical), the white walls do help it's looks somewhat, and I would not mind seeing a retro styled Woody station wagon make a come back in the market that has at least a thin white wall strip on the factory tires.

Thanks for making a video on this topic

I was waiting for you to make this episode, and now here it is! I always wanted to learn about the history of whitewall tires and always wondered why they fell out of vogue. Keep the great content coming, Ed! :)

I turn 40 this month. I can't really remember any time in my life when white-wall tires were considered particularly stylish, or culturally relevant, aside from one of the lines in Billy Joel's nostalgia-loving song "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" (which was released a couple of years before I was born, but was still on the radio a lot when I was a kid and still is on the radio from time to time now).

It really shows how much whitewalls can bring value to a car when you look at 50's cars with and without them. They genuinely look cheaper, no matter how much chrome there is on the body. Holding onto that tradition with white stripes on tires all the way up to the 80's worked fine on those conservatively designed luxury cars.

Ed talks about whitewalls in a game set in 1940s . Then apologises by saying "I went somewhat off topic here" Then we see a game where you must navigate a boat through a river full of obstacles (an ad). Sometimes, not watching a video on a browser with an ad-blocker pays off. Loved it.

Pretty Good Video ! in an un-related matter - - before crowbars were invented, crows had to drink outside ...

wow ed I'm so proud of you! I found your hidden jem of a channel a year ago when you only had 5k subs. honestly, your content hasn't even improved that much, you are just finally getting the recognition you deserve. keep grinding and you can totally get a million!

Great automotive subject ! I'm 50/50 on this, whitewall where and are great, all black looks great, raised white letters, again are great. Now try your hand at the evolution of the wheel rims. We now have 22" rims with a ribbon of rubber tire ! It has become a ridiculous trend. I think we might be going back to 36" wooden wheels !

Bravo! You arrive to make a subject as insignificant as whitewall tires to a very interesting part of automobile history. Bravo and merci! You’re good. Very.

I owned a new '78 Olds Cutlass with Firestone 721 whitewall tires. Had an issue with belts shifting in two of the tires which was covered under warranty. When I picked up the car it did not look cool with whitewalls. They installed tires on the rear with the wrong width of whitewall. They took care of the problem right away but you would think someone would have noticed before the customer showed up.

Oh Ed what a great idea!!!! Windshield wipers too!!! Focusing on the 1965 Pontiacs!!! GREAT JOB!!!

I’m rebuilding a 50’s car. It was actually kind of hard finding whitewalls at a decent price, sure you can get Coker tires but they’re very expensive!

This is the content I have been waiting for.

Growing up in the 60's whitewalls were the standard and the cars looked great. It was sad to see them fade away and I think many of the look alike cars today would look better with whitewalls. It would be nice to see them come back in style at least as an option.

I absolutely enjoyed this episode. I wonder if those Mercedes Benz/BMW/Porsche drug year cars of Miami Florida (mid-80’s) had many white walls. They did do quite a lot of body coloured grills back then and also had an affinity for the colour white, inside and out. Thanks for the video.

I remember the scrubbing needed to keep whitewalls clean. I would also add the lower profile of tires since the 1970's meant less room or need for the whitewall stripe. Blackwall tires also made the tires and cars look more 'European'. By the way Ed, with your deep knowledge and sense of the US/North American automobile culture, are you sure you are not actually an American ? Did you live in the USA or Canada for a period of time in your life ?

I sure do miss the old whitewalls and the fender skirts, they gave cars character.

The 1960's being my favorite car era, I can't imagine the cars without whitewalls, and almost all of them had them, even many versions of the sporty cars, Mustangs, Camaros, Corvettes. Look at photos of those cars and imagine them without whitewalls; they just wouldn't have been the same. The whitewall added just the right touch. For me, white letter tires do much the same thing.

1980-90s a lot of tires were down to really thin whitewall stripes "pinner whites" that nobody thought looked good enough to EVER bother cleaning, they all looked bad so perception changed and mostly the tire places were mounting them White Side In.

The aesthetic of white walls is still in style in a way with large alloy wheels and extremely low profile tires.

My 1953 Ford Customline I bought in 2020 still has bias ply tires from 1987 on it. I have the receipt in the glovebox. Only one of them has dry rot cracks on it. In the trunk, it has a Davis Safety Sentry bias ply tires which is from the early 60s I was told by an old man who I talked to that worked in the tire business back then.

Loved the white letter tires on 60 early 70's cars....they were selling white wall tires up into the 90's, but most people turned them to the inside.

I used to own a Harley-Davidson with whitewalls. They looked fantastic, but took a LOT of effort to keep clean. And I think that’s where the “rich” image comes from. Having whitewalls means that you can pay someone else to clean your tyres.

It's funny, one of my cars is a latter day "classic" a first half-year-production 1983 Camry... it came with 165SR13 tires. That tire size is no longer around. You can get the less-tall 165/80R13, but I found that that every year a small run of 175/80R13 tires are made, which is closest to the stock size you can get, so I go with those. And guess what, they are whitewalls as well! Well, white stripe, but it's there, and I have them mounted showing. I've mostly cut back on commuting the 82 miles to work in it because the clutch is about gone, but when I do, I can confidently say that I have the only car in the BTM parking lot sporting whitewall tires. I've also run these same tires on my 85 Golf. Oh, and I have RWL on the back tires on my Baja Beetle.

Really enjoy the videos. Not only are they informative as a was a kid in the 60s and 70s, but also they bring back memories of the cars I saw (some I owned). I had an 83 Marquis Brougham. It came with white walls, but within a couple of years I had them mounted black to make yhe car look sportier.

As usual, another fun and ED-ucational video. Appreciate all the work you've put into this series 👍

I have vivid memories of having to clean the whitewalls on mom’s wagon and the ROWL on my father’s truck as a punishment. That and having to weed our 80x35ft driveway. Guess what I now refuse to do since moving on my own?

Gotta love hubcaps, especially when you got a stone stuck in one and it rattled around.

Another lovely video....laughed out loud a couple of times. Great humour, and I learned something - especially why I fell out of love with my whitewalls on my motorcycle. But now I'm thinking about it....

I would love to see an episode on the history of the American coach building industry and how it transitioned to cars. I know there has been a lot of mention of it, but it would be cool to see more!

Vulcanization originally referred to the addition of sulphur compounds to natural rubber to strengthen it. It was invented by Charles Goodyear.

Love you ED and I don't care what anyone says about you LOL. I actually made red stripes for my 69 GS clone.

I love that cute Italian intro with the latin lover cinquecento😍

I simply love the whitewall tyres and i would totally use it in a car...problem is,they get dirty very easily. And they are not cheap. But they are classic and will always be pretty

The New Beetle also looks fantastic with whitewalls

I myself don't like whitewall tires but the redline and blue line look good on 60's models.

Thanks Ed for the great information

Another excellent video, Ed. Thanks for all the effort you put in to make these videos for our enjoyment..

I believe the rim size also had some impact on the downfall of white walls. I mean on a 17-20inch wheel, is there any space for the white to show?

The detail about LA Noir was probably my favorite part of the video. The 300 with white walls made a mediocre car bad.

Great video! I've always hated seeing old work trucks, step vans etc at car shows with whitewalls

Thank you. This was a great video. As a child of the 1970's and my Dad a kid from the 1940's/50's one of my first jobs was cleaning his white wall tires on the 1939 Ford 4 door Deluxe . This was a great video!

Brillo pads scrub your whitewalls clean. Did that on my Chevette.

I'm all EARs

Brilliantly entertaining and informative. I really had no idea why some cars in the 20s had white tyres; I'd seen them but just thought it was some fleeting fashion. I love your perfect use of 'days of yore', I work with native English-speaking students who couldn't do that. While we're on the subject of period accuracy, have you noticed how many films that are meant to be set in pre-80s France have cars with white headlights instead of yellow? Drives me mad.

Quickly becoming one of my favorite channels

Oooh

Rich people wear white pants. The poor wears too as an uniform lol

9:17...please do an episode dedicated to light bars 🙏🏻 I love love love this feature from back in the early 90s 😍

My wifes 2011 Chevy HHR has 16×7 White Wall Tires & Steel Chrome Wheels with "Baby 👀Moon" Hub Caps it gives it a Retro Look of the 1950's station wagons

As one who has ridden bicycles for many decades I remember that until the 1980s or so it was standard for bicycle tyres to have white or beige sides, they then changed to all-black, which went along with some other improvements such as being more puncture-proof, so the all-black tyres (such as "Schwalbe Marathon") were seen as an indication of better quality.

When I was a student in the mid eighties I drove white Ascona B with White striped tires... Smoooth :)

I used to carry a Tipex pen with me when I was a kid and I used to paint the lettering "Supergrip" on my Raleigh Grifter. I thought I was the Bees Knees 😀

I always made sure my Harley Davidsons had whitewalls, they look so smart with a two tone paint job, but there was a time back in the day when whitewalls were unavailable for motorcycles in the UK. All you could get were 3 inch white inserts [ for cars ] that fitted under the bead and sat on top of the black tyre. Many hours were spent inflating and deflating the tyre ,cursing and hammering them under the bead with a rubber hammer only to find the whitewall ',cockled' and off centre, Yes, it was a true labour of love to achieve ' the look ' back in the day.

White-walls make the Baby Moons on my Classy Chassis shine, Daddy-O!! Excellent video! Thanks 👍🏼

I remember cleaning my dad's 1974 Nova Spirit of America whitewalls with steel wool. A few quick brushes with it, and the white looked brand new. When I got my 1978 Mustang II, it had BF Goodrich Radial T/As, and I would do the same thing to clean each letter. In just a few minutes, all four tires looked brand new.

Love the use of Monopoly Tycoon's soundtrack for the video through the eras! Nostalgia right there

10:38 basically summed up how I dream to make my own personal custom car but except, the paint is based on the cruisin lighting McQueen paint job but I find it cool looking and stylish in a way. Just the metallic red with the cool glossy pearly white paint with the lighting looks stunning, and with the white walls makes it pop in my opinion

I love the look of white letter tires. But I also love both muscle cars and traditional, offroad oriented trucks/SUVs. Few things look as good to me as raised white letters on basically any muscle car, or a lifted Hilux or CJ-7.

I have whitewalls on my 2015 Dodge Charger SRT and I love them! I get compliments all the time on them and how my car looks with them. I also have about 15 classic cars mostly all whitewalls or white letter tires on those as well.

I can tell you this much, the newest Z and the 240/280Z they look amazing with white walls and the five point rims

I always loved the looked of whitewall tires on older era cars. Such a classic timeless look.

I'm so glad this channel took off this much

Yes i have white lettering on my jeep, infact the standard MUD and SNOW tires I got (KO2s) are non directional so they already come black one side white the other, I wasn’t planning on the white but when my mechanic asked me I looked at him for a moment and said “no way, white walls out” I love it! We also have my great aunts 1987 caddie, It actually has white walls but for what ever reason he and my uncle opted to have the white mounted inside, when I get around to refreshing that thing I’m definitely putting white walls on it!

When I was 6, my dad bought a new '72 Ford LTD. With white wall tires; my job at age four on Saturdays was to use a brush and a product called Wesley's Bleach White to clean the white walls while dad washed the car. Those were skinny bias ply tires; His next car was a '77 Cadillac Coupe de Ville d'Elegance, which had white wall tires. I was not fond of this car, since it was "Bimini Beige" or pink and as such I used to hide behind the pillar when I traveled in it! I did NOT clean the tires on that car. I washed it when dad asked but his silly tires could go fuck themselves! My first car was a '77 VW Rabbit and it had nice blackwall tires and silver painted steel rims. I've never had white wall tires on any car I have owned! Great video!

Yeay! New video!