This '68 Firebird is wearing reproduction bias-ply Wide Oval tires. Photo by author.
It's hard to believe that it has been 50 years since Firestone introduced its illustrious Super Sports Wide Oval tire. Featuring a lower profile and wider tread than conventional tires of the era, it promised increased traction for improved handling, braking and straight-line performance. Many muscle cars and pony cars offered the Wide Oval as original equipment – standard or as an optional performance upgrade – at various times from the tire's introduction and use on 1967 model year cars forward to vehicles of the early 1970s. Redline, whiteline and/or raised-white-letter sidewall configurations were available depending upon the year and model.
The Wide Oval competed for sales with Goodyear's Wide Tread tire (and later the Polyglas GT) and U.S. Royal's Tiger Paw among others, which were also original equipment on myriad performance cars of the period.
Pontiac described the F70-14 red line Wide Oval thusly in its 1967 literature: "It is 25% wider than conventional tires, gives a very positive road "feel" and firm ride, and is not interchangeable with conventional tires."
In the February 1967 issue, Motor Trend reported that the Wide Oval tire had won one of that year's Special Awards for "Features and accessories appearing on 1967 cars deemed worthy of special recognition for significant achievement." Regarding the Wide Oval, it was for the incorporation of race car characteristics into an affordable high performance tire for street cars.
An original Wide Oval is depicted in this vintage ad.
In its September 1967 issue, Car and Driver magazine tested six popular high performance tires. They included cross-ply (bias-ply) tires—D70-14 Firestone Wide Oval, D70-14 Goodyear Wide Tread and 7.75-14 U.S. Royal Tiger Paw and comparatively sized radial-ply tires—185-14 Dunlop Sport CB 57, Michelin X and the Pirelli CN72.
According to the article, all tires were purchased retail and anonymously to avoid ringers. Tire prices ranged from the $44.87 Wide Oval to the $51.90 Michelin.
A 1967 Shelby GT-350 with automatic transmission and 14 x 6 Hurst wheels was the test car and the test facility was New York National Speedway. The five individual tests consisted of, wet-and-dry skid-pad, wet-and-dry braking, and acceleration.
Examining the best performance figures, the Wide Oval won the dry skid-pad test, posting a top lateral acceleration figure of .663g with a .636g average of its best three laps. It tied for second in the wet skid-pad with a .581g best and .572g average. It earned third place in quarter-mile acceleration with a best e.t. of 15.14 and an average of the top three passes of 15.31, fourth place in wet braking from 80 MPH with deceleration figures of .715g best and .683g average and fifth place in dry braking at a best of .815g and average of .790g.
The bias-ply Wide Oval tires were also joined by Supreme Radial Wide Ovals in the late 1960s. (In 2004, Bridgestone/Firestone North American Tire L.L.C. reintroduced the Wide Oval name on modern performance tires in Firestone's Firehawk series—the Wide Oval Indy 500 and Wide Oval AS (both not shown) for 15 to 20-inch wheel sizes. After about a dozen years, the Firehawk Wide Oval was replaced this past May.)
The author noted that the tires were not ranked from best to worst in the article based on the results, as each tire had excelled in some areas and revealed compromises in others. All the tires were close in performance with the largest variance in any test being 12.6%. Each tire, except for the Tiger Paw, had won at least one category.
Using the best performances for comparison and not the averages, on the wet skid-pad, the Wide Oval's second place finish was just .018g lower than the first place Michelin X radial. For acceleration, its third place ranking was .10-second slower than the top performing Goodyear Wide Tread. Its fourth place wet braking performance was .068g lower than the number one Dunlop CB 57 radial and the dry braking fifth place figure was .049g lower than the first place Pirelli CN72 radial.
Wide Oval bias-ply tires were being phased out by the mid-1970s, but demand returned when interest in restoring 1960s and 1970s muscle cars to concours condition began to grow in the 1980s and 1990s. To serve this market, Coker Tire began to manufacture reproduction Firestone Wide Oval bias-plies using the original molds and current materials, and it has been doing so in the USA for many years. Offered is a choice of raised-white-letter, 3/8-inch redline sidewall or 3/8-inch whitewall (aka. white stripe or whiteline) in numerous sizes to match what was originally mounted on various muscle cars.
Here's Coker Tire's new raised-white-letter Wide Oval radial tire. A Redline Wide Oval radial will also be available. Both provide radial tire attributes while maintaining a bias-ply appearance. For those who still prefer the bias-ply Wide Oval tires, they will still be available from Coker.
Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the original Wide Oval, Coker is introducing a Wide Oval radial tire that combines the classic appearance of the original bias-ply tire with the ride, handling and tread wear qualities associated with a radial design.
The announcement came at the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) show this past Tuesday, November 1, 2016. The Wide Oval radials will be offered in raised-white-letter and redline. Sizes include ER70-14, FR70-14, GR70-14, FR70-15, GR70-15 and FR60-15. (The FR60-15 is not available as a redline.) Coker Tire (CokerTire.com) is taking advance orders now and the tires are due out in January 2017.
Like so many aspects regarding vintage muscle cars, everything old is new again. Coker chose to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original Firestone Super Sports Wide Oval bias-ply tire with an updated radial version for muscle car owners—further assurance that the Wide Oval name will carry on well into the future.
Here's an early 1970s Wide Oval ad.
from Hemmings Daily – News for the collector car enthusiast http://ift.tt/2fkVeJq
No comments:
Post a Comment