If you are building a "performance car", with more horsepower, "better" suspension, and are planning to drive it harder than most, why skimp on the wheel/tire package that is quite possibly the most critical compnent on a car? There is tons of knock-off garbage flowing into this country at a record pace. When you buy a wheel at $129 from Tire Rack or whoever else, they are selling it for roughly a minimum of 30 points. They are buying it for $80-90. The WD (or manufacturer) might be selling it at their bare minimum for 25 points, because of the volume they are getting from a large buyer in this case. So, we are down to the $50 dollar range now, minus the $10 or so ride to the US and tax/tariff. Now we're down to $40 or less. Tooling and development typically soak up about 20-30% in most cases, coating and curing is another $5-10. That leaves about $25 for materials, overhead, packaging, advertising, PR, and so on. At $20 or less in materials to make a 20lb aluminum wheel, what do you think you are getting? These are certainly not the castings that I would put much risk into, especially over an OE wheel that goes through years of development and testing.
Signed,
Your resident Automotive Engineer (and Guy who's father owned a very large wheel company)
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Originally Posted by tnomud
