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Whitewall tire

Whitewall tires are tires that have a stripe of white rubber on the outer sidewalls. The original whitewalls featured an entirely white sidewall. Modern whitewall tires often just have a thin white stripe, or white raised lettering identifying the tire manufacturer and tire model. Such tires were still made with a full strip of white rubber under the black. The raised white letters were revealed by buffing the cured tire sidewall. It was also necessary to use expensive non-staining antioxidents in the sidewall and carcass compounds to avoid staining the white compound brown. The black covering strip was made of Neoprene (polychloroprene), again to avoid staining.

Classic vehicles have usually been optioned with wide whitewalls - it was a fad during the pre and post-war era, only to resurface in the 1970s within the pimpmobile culture. Although wide whitewalls are a rare find these days, they are either sold brand new through tire specialty outlets and/or classic car restoration companies. Some companies manufacture wide whitewall inserts - the Portawall inserts are usually sold through VW Beetle restoration companies.

Whitewalls were popular on classic cars, lowrider and Cadillacs. In recent years they have fallen out of vogue because of the maintenance required to keep whitewalls bright and white. Additionally the current trend is to use larger wheels and lower profile tires, so the side walls often aren’t wide enough to have a white wall.

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This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.