Top 20 Hot Rod Wheels - 20 Hot Wheels

Every car's gotta have them, so you might as well make them look good. The owners of the cars seen here took the time to get it right-nailing the look, the tire size, and the stance to make it all come together. Some of the wheels on these cars are thrifty, and some are spendy, but they all look cool. We rediscovered all of these hoops when we searched the PHR archives from the past few years. Then we searched the web to get current, real-world pricing on each one. In many instances, we found the "street" price to be well below the manufacturer's suggested retail price, so it pays to shop around.

We haven't included back spacing here, because components like brakes, control arms and rearends will change the requirement from car to car. All these manufacturers offer wheels in multiple back spacing, so there's no shortcut to checking this beforehand.

Along similar lines, not all the wheel/tire combinations listed are direct bolt-ons for that style of car. Some of the cars seen here needed body or suspension mods to make them work. Your best bets are to ask owners of similar cars what fits, visit message forums, take plenty of measurements, and consult with wheel manufacturers before you buy. Even if you're considering the same wheels as a car that's a dead ringer for yours, check and double-check the fitment before you buy. No two cars are alike.

Best Forums For Wheel & Tire FitmentConsidering that wheels and tires are usually one of the first (not to mention most popular) mods people do, we thought it unusual that there's such a dearth of fitment information on the net. Nevertheless, there are some bright spots out there. We've listed some of the better sources for peer-provided fitment info. These Web sites are listed because they have specific forums for wheels and tires where members have queried and posted a variety of wheel fitments for specific models. Most other major sites have this information too, but it's a lot harder to get at because you've got to search for it.

Try Before You BuyYou know when you've seen a "wheel abortion." You're trolling through the car cruise, and suddenly you're visually assaulted. It's a wheel/tire combo so wrong, it makes little old ladies vomit two blocks away. Yet the car owner is apparently oblivious to this effrontery. It all could've been avoided if he'd used the Interactive WheelShop on the Popular Hot Rodding homepage (www.popularhotrodding.com).

It works like this: Select the brand, model, color, and year of your car, select the wheel manufacturer, then select the style of wheel you want. The Web site puts it all together in the final screen, where you can select the wheel diameter, tire size, and wheel offset. You can even make suspension tweaks to the rake of the car. It's free and you can use it as often as you like. One word of warning: If you pick a 20-inch wheel, WheelShop will draw it with incredible photo-realism, but you're on the hook for making it fit!

Six Screamin' DealsMost of the wheels in this story are from car features we've shot over the past few years. As such, most of them are in the mid- to high-price range. We know many of you are looking for affordable deals for your daily-driven street machine, so we did some poking around on the Internet, and we found some good ones. Here are some popular styles along with the Web sites we found them on. To level the playing field, we priced all wheels in 15x8, with a GM 5-on-4.75-inch bolt circle. In most cases, we also found the common Ford and Mopar bolt patterns at the same price.-Johnny Hunkins