Dear mid-60s Buick owners with a snack for period-correct exterior decor,
One frequently overlooked aspect of keeping your car period-correct are correct appearing tires. Some purists will stubbornly insist on bias-ply tires. Yet there is one more detail that is much more obvious but is not as frequently attended to - whitewall tires. According to this Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewall_tireWide whitewalls generally fell out of favor in the U.S. by the 1962 model year, replaced mostly by 1" whitewall and a few other color combinations. Here is my trusty wagon sporting traditional 1" whitewall tires from Coker:
Of course this sort of conservative style isn't exactly boasting. Many muscle car enthusiasts prefer the
"louder" raised white lettering to be found on the popular performance tires. However, this isn't period-correct. According to Wikipedia once more, raised white lettering didn't appear until the late 1960s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_letteringOn the contrary, the 1965 Gran Sport and 1964 Sportwagon were both sold with 1" white walls. Moreover the 1965 Buick brochure on the Old Car Manual project website shows whitewalls on all of the Buick lineup even the Buick Special:
http://www.oldcarbrochures.org/index.php/NA/Buick/1965_Buick/1965-Buick-Full-Line-Prestige-BrochureOf course period tires lack the performance advantages of radial tires. Since then tire styles have evolved to put much more rubber on the road which has great performance benefits. Still, the conventional wisdom is that you can either have period correct tires or modern high-performance tires - not both. Surprisingly, conventional wisdom is -
wrong!
The tire on the left is a BFGoodrich Advantage T/A P205/65-R15. The tire that it is resting on is a BFGoodrich Radial T/A P235/60-R15. If you look carefully, you'll see that information on the tire labels. Still don't believe me? Here is the
"back" of the Radial T/A tire:
This magic is thanks to
Diamond Back Classic tires:
https://dbtires.com/How they do this is described on this web page:
https://dbtires.com/classic-car-tires/tire-making-process/In a nutshell the permanently bond the whitewall stripe using a process called
vulcanization. The bond is so permanent that the whitewall could not be removed without damaging the rubber underneath. What isn't described in the Diamond Back process is what can be seen in the previous photo. Instead of removing the raised white lettering from the BFGoodrich Radial T/A, the put the whitewall on the former "back" of the tire - making that the front of the whitewall tire. To hide the white lettering, Diamond Back applies some more black rubber using vulcanization. That way the lettering won't detract from the underside of your car.
Of course putting your
ride together is a very personal matter and which tires you choose is a part of those choices. However, given that my car is a wagon that I want to use to pull a vintage travel trailer, it was very important that she really look like she just went through a time warp from 1965. So 1" whitewalls were an important part of the effect. At the same time, pulling a mid-sized trailer will take just about everything she can provide, so beefy tires were also an absolute requirement. So basically I had no choice to but to turn to Diamond Back classic tires.
Now that I've introduced the motivation and demonstrated what Diamond Back can do, I'll continue to describe how this process unfolds - starting with how the tires were shipped and some of the instructions that Diamond Back provides. The day I ordered these tires the fellow I was speaking with reported that they had a problem with another customer who left the tires in the shipping plastic for 2 years! Apparently the whitewalls didn't survive that sort of treatment!
So please enjoy the journey along with me! . . .
Cheers, Edouard
