Back in the olden days of October 2014, I bought a unicorn called a Z/28. It was an incredible vehicle that I loved owning and driving. Three months later the opportunity came up to trade up to a Z07, and despite my affection for the 28 I could not pass up the chance to get into the C7Z.
Yet one visual aspect of the Z/28 could not escape my desire, and that was its wheel design. I have owned so many cars over the years, many exotics included, most of them with aftermarket wheels, and no wheel design ever cought my eye as the OEM Z/28 wheel did … it is no hyperbole to say that it was my favorite wheel design of all time.
So when I bought the Vette I looked everywhere one could look to see if such a design existed in the aftermarket world. What I found out is that 5 Y spoke wheels are everywhere, every high (and low) end manufacturer makes an almost identical version of them. Be they PUR4, Mesh5, HRE 101 series, they are the most common wheel design out there. And for good reason, especially in exotics because their clean, classic, and elegant design shows off the huge discs and hardware behind the wheel.
Now the Z/28 5 Y spoke wheel had a subtle yet very significant (to my eye) variation on the theme. They were the only ones I had seen that has the V part of the Y spokes angling at each other as they went to the lip. This created a much more aggressive hollow star effect that I could net get out of my mind.
I contacted several high end forged wheel manufacturers to see if they could duplicate this look but in Z06 specs, and although they managed to generate it on CAD, there was something missing. What was missing was the concavity. The Z/28 has a completely different offset which pushes the wheels way past the fenders, including the fender extensions Chevy put on there. This allows it to have huge concavity. The Z06 natural offsets don’t allow for that, so all the designs we could come up with looked ok straight on, but just like all the other aftermarket wheels on the market we could get very little concavity into them retaining offsets that kept the edges flush to the fenders.
Not sure if that all made sense, but just take a look at aftermarket C7 wheels and you’ll see minimal concavity angle compared to what can be had on other sport cars.
Enter a friend of mine called Ben who owns WeaponX Motorsports.
I had given up on the idea of getting the Z/28 look on my Z06, and had started discussing other wheel options with him … in fact I pulled the trigger on a design I liked. Then one day whilst we were shooting the poop I told him of my failed endeavor in regards to replicating the Z/28 wheel on my C7Z. It turns out he had been thinking along similar lines and was already in the process of launching his own wheel line partnering with an existing high end forging company. This precipitated me canceling my standing wheel order, and a collaboration between Ben and myself to try to create this special wheel design. After much back and forth, we agreed on a design, and I decided to guinea pig it.
Let me say the following: All I had was a design in my head and no other wheel company could make it come to life. The only reason it did is because of Ben’s creativity which led to creating a convex angle from the lip, bending the spokes mid V (as opposed to where the V meets the I) which resolved to this insanely beautiful wheel design with concavity unseen (at least to me) in a C7.
The pictures which are about to follow don’t represent the finished product. The center caps will be different, the lugs will be painted to match, and the car will be lowered for street use … what is pictured below is just a test fitting.
The final specs will be:
- 2 piece custom forged
- Painted Carbon Flash (to match OEM black trim pieces on vehicle)
- 20” front with 295 P Zero
- 21” rear with 375 P Zero
- Hidden hardware
- Colormatched center caps
- Colormatched lug nuts
I will post additional and better pics when everything is complete … but for now here’s some 'first look' wheel ****:
Yet one visual aspect of the Z/28 could not escape my desire, and that was its wheel design. I have owned so many cars over the years, many exotics included, most of them with aftermarket wheels, and no wheel design ever cought my eye as the OEM Z/28 wheel did … it is no hyperbole to say that it was my favorite wheel design of all time.
So when I bought the Vette I looked everywhere one could look to see if such a design existed in the aftermarket world. What I found out is that 5 Y spoke wheels are everywhere, every high (and low) end manufacturer makes an almost identical version of them. Be they PUR4, Mesh5, HRE 101 series, they are the most common wheel design out there. And for good reason, especially in exotics because their clean, classic, and elegant design shows off the huge discs and hardware behind the wheel.
Now the Z/28 5 Y spoke wheel had a subtle yet very significant (to my eye) variation on the theme. They were the only ones I had seen that has the V part of the Y spokes angling at each other as they went to the lip. This created a much more aggressive hollow star effect that I could net get out of my mind.
I contacted several high end forged wheel manufacturers to see if they could duplicate this look but in Z06 specs, and although they managed to generate it on CAD, there was something missing. What was missing was the concavity. The Z/28 has a completely different offset which pushes the wheels way past the fenders, including the fender extensions Chevy put on there. This allows it to have huge concavity. The Z06 natural offsets don’t allow for that, so all the designs we could come up with looked ok straight on, but just like all the other aftermarket wheels on the market we could get very little concavity into them retaining offsets that kept the edges flush to the fenders.
Not sure if that all made sense, but just take a look at aftermarket C7 wheels and you’ll see minimal concavity angle compared to what can be had on other sport cars.
Enter a friend of mine called Ben who owns WeaponX Motorsports.
I had given up on the idea of getting the Z/28 look on my Z06, and had started discussing other wheel options with him … in fact I pulled the trigger on a design I liked. Then one day whilst we were shooting the poop I told him of my failed endeavor in regards to replicating the Z/28 wheel on my C7Z. It turns out he had been thinking along similar lines and was already in the process of launching his own wheel line partnering with an existing high end forging company. This precipitated me canceling my standing wheel order, and a collaboration between Ben and myself to try to create this special wheel design. After much back and forth, we agreed on a design, and I decided to guinea pig it.
Let me say the following: All I had was a design in my head and no other wheel company could make it come to life. The only reason it did is because of Ben’s creativity which led to creating a convex angle from the lip, bending the spokes mid V (as opposed to where the V meets the I) which resolved to this insanely beautiful wheel design with concavity unseen (at least to me) in a C7.
The pictures which are about to follow don’t represent the finished product. The center caps will be different, the lugs will be painted to match, and the car will be lowered for street use … what is pictured below is just a test fitting.
The final specs will be:
- 2 piece custom forged
- Painted Carbon Flash (to match OEM black trim pieces on vehicle)
- 20” front with 295 P Zero
- 21” rear with 375 P Zero
- Hidden hardware
- Colormatched center caps
- Colormatched lug nuts
I will post additional and better pics when everything is complete … but for now here’s some 'first look' wheel ****:
yes all I read was blah, blah, blah, big ass tires, blah blah blah 
