This wheel’s on fire
Rolling down the road
Best notify my next of kin
This wheel shall explode!
The “Pantera Party” may be over, but the melody lingers on in the form of this new wheel design from Road Race Replicas that was made to go with the Pantera body! RRR calls this style “the GT Wheel.” Whatever. I didn’t even use these wheels on every Pantera I built, since variety is the spice of life, but I started thinking…I wonder what other cars this design might look good on? I decided to get while the getting was good and bought about 10 sets in various colors, and I have some ideas about how to use them! Since I’m getting the fleet ready for the fall racing season, this seemed like as good a time as any to do some wheel and axle swaps, so here’s some of the results for both the sports cars and the muscle cars!
I am making an effort to get the few cars in my customized fleets that are running on stock Auto World wheels and tires off of them for the consistency of having all of them customized; it just seems right to me, especially since both the Trans Am fleet and the new Super Stock fleet all run on the stock wheels and tires. “Demeter,” the white Ferrari 206S of Federico “SLINGSHOT” Santana, got a set of these “Panny-Tera” wheels in red, with low profile tires to clear the tight front wheel wells. The awesome Firestone “Goldline” tires she formerly wore have been nicely repurposed on the red ’62 Bel-Air in the Super Stock fleet, which really dresses up this car, which previously had only plain blackwalls.
Only days after building it, I’ve already made a change to “Kraken,” the white Cheetah; the black painted “Bullets” she originally wore are beautiful wheels but for some reason I just wasn’t quite happy with them on this car; these gray finish “GTs” look more realistic to me, and-though its probably either an optical illusion or perhaps my imagination-they have the added bonus of making the abnormally large wheel wells on this model look a little more stuffed with tire!
“The Crystal Queen,” the white and gold Dash Motorsports 1970 Camaro SS I originally built on Thanksgiving Day last year, originally wore Vincent’s 2-piece “Dotz” style. These looked good with the gold stripes, but I thought they were a little too “delicate” in their appearance for a rip-snorting muscle car; now shod with gold “GT’s”, she looks more “business-like,” even if she is dressed up for the ball, giving driver Mark “MAD MAX” Madison a little more attitude!
Probably the best affect of these 4, my “Moulin Rouge” ’70 340 ‘Cuda “The Pink Panzer” is one of the hottest performers in the muscle fleet, but being one of my oldest cars, was in desperate need of a complete overhaul. She got it, including a full chassis disassembly and cleaning (she was hellaciously dirty, and even the inside of the body and windows got cleaned up), and the original clipped Auto World axles with RRR “Magnums” – even though they looked pretty good – were traded in for of a new set of RRR axles with black GT’s; these match her matte black “Organisol” coated hood perfectly, and she rolls even better now than before! The makeover was topped off with a new extra-long OS3 guide pin. One of only a couple of muscle cars raced by a female driver, Lila “Little Lady” Luciano was fast before, but is probably going to be almost unbeatable now!
Undoubtedly the best version of that song and of course Siouxsie always has something relevant to sing for ever occasion! Definitely some good choice on the wheels, for looks but also performance. It seems like swapping out those wheels and being consistent would make for a more level playing field across the racers.
Exactly! A more level playing field is what I’m after; the stock setup gives the cars very different characteristics on the track (not better, necessarily, but different) so it seems more “equitable” to have them all running on a custom set, and use the stockers-which certainly have their place-for other applications.