COKER CORNER COKER + CRAGAR = PERFECTION Founded in 1958, Coker Tire Company is the world’s largest manufacturer of tires and wheels for collector vehicles. With authentic brands such as Firestone, BF Goodrich, Michelin and more, the Chattanooga, Tennessee-based company supplies a 100-year range of tire fitments for classic cars, muscle cars, Hot Rods, classic trucks and more. Coker Tire also offers a wide variety of American-made steel wheels and high-quality accessories for numerous applications. Find out more about the extensive product line at CokerTire.com. When it comes to trends in the automotive world, we’ve witnessed many come and go. Air shocks and side pipes had their turn in the limelight, and so did alloy wheels with directional patterns. Staying true to the originality of a car is a good way to avoid the quickly aging trends, but it can seem a bit boring if you have Hot Rodding on your mind. For years, the crew here at Coker Tire has balanced the devotion to produce 100-percent correct tires and wheels with the custom combinations that Hot Rodders desire. Those two paths don’t always cross, but we’ve recently opened a whole new world of possibilities by bringing the Cragar S/S wheel into our extensive line of products. The Cragar S/S is iconic for Hot Rodders, but it also touches a wide range of car enthusiasts—even those who are looking for a period-correct combination. To give you some background on the wheel design, we must first rewind the clock back to 1930, when a man by the name of Crane Gartz began developing performance parts for aircraft engines and Ford Model A engines. He used the first three letters of his first and last name to create the name “Cragar.” Gartz sold the business just a few years later, but the Cragar name stuck, even through various ownerships throughout the company’s long history. One of the defining moments for the company came in 1955, when Roy Richter purchased it and proceeded to develop new products to feed the growing Hot Rod market. Cragar began offering even more high-performance parts, including intake manifolds and other components to adapt roots superchargers to work with gasoline-powered V-8s. Most notably, Richter brought Cragar into the wheel market with the introduction of the Cragar S/S in 1964. The 1960s was a time of outstanding innovation in the drag racing and Hot Rodding world. Richter was one of the founding fathers of the Speed Equipment Manufacturer’s Association (SEMA), which is now known as the Specialty Equipment Market Association. This organization was devoted to the development and safety of racing parts, but it also gave companies the push they needed to enter the automotive aftermarket. Back then, the choices for custom wheels were limited. Many Hot Rodders would use magnesium racing wheels, or they might even send their original wheels off for chrome plating, but there wasn’t an affordable option that blended the two worlds of racing and show cars. That’s where the Cragar S/S came into play, as it featured a steel rim and cast-aluminum center, all covered in show-quality chrome plating. Even though the Cragar S/S was not a lightweight racing wheel, it was used on thousands of drag cars throughout the 1960s. This served as the ultimate marketing campaign for the company, as these race-winning drag cars graced the pages of many automotive magazines and encouraged buyers to jump on the latest trend for their street car. What they didn’t realize is the impact that the Cragar S/S wheel would have on the muscle car market, which was just getting started when the wheels landed on the shelves of every local speed shop in the United States. Thanks to a wide variety of sizes and bolt patterns, the wheel offered universal fitment and gave car enthusiasts the ability to spice up the appearance of their daily driver without any long-term modifications. You could always switch back to stock when it was time to trade in your car for a new one, and you can bet that Cragar S/S wheels often found their way onto multiple cars throughout their life cycle. 116 // MECUM.COM
