Design165: hot rod design

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Updating a 66 Canadian Valiant (Dart GT)

Here's our 1966 Valiant GT. My father bought it as a roller, and completed it a few years back. It's a gnarly ride, is fast as hell, and gets plenty of looks. Pro-street cars however, are a bit dated in todays world of pro touring g-machines. I feel like a set of different wheels/tires would bring it outta the 90's and achieve a better look pretty easily. With the exception of the wheel/tire combo, the car actually shows pretty well. There is no super heavy rake; the car hunkers down all the way around, the color isn't a pastel of any sort (black is always the new black), we managed to stuff all the power under the hood with no huge honkin' snorkel, and there's no tweed anywhere in the cockpit.

It's just the shoes... good god, those Centerlines KILL me.

SO! I'm trying to find some decent wheels and tires to swap in to make it look a little more pro-touring... or at least timeless rather than screaming 1990.
Size-wise, I'm thinking 17's or 18's up front, and would be open to anything from 18"-20" out back. Width-wise, the front can probably tuck a 6" wide wheel but no wider, and the rears are currently 15" wide.

Price-wise there's a very big difference between staying with 15's and goin with big dia wheel, so one option would be a "how to be able to still use the existing rear tires" Front tires are cheap enough.

Here's the "lower cost" option. inspiration comes form the ram charger cars of the 60's that ran steel rear wheels and mag fronts. I would run 15"x5" E/T Dragmasters up front and widened black steelies out back.