Auto Anatomy 3: Wheels: Ain't nothing like the wheel thing: Forget the Amphicar (there was one once) and the air cushion: wheels define the car, says Jonathan Glancey

AUTO ANATOMY

3 WHEELS

WHEELS are such an essential part of a car that the word is now used to describe the whole machine, as in 'got a new set of wheels' or 'You need wheels if you're gonna make deals, You need a car if you're gonna get far, A man ain't a man with a ticket in his hand . . .' (The Merton Parkas).

The wheels that carried the first recognisable motorcars in the 1890s were altogether less macho. The 1896 Benz made do with what looked like giant bicycle wheels; but as the car weighed little and could only do 10mph they were quite up to the job. Within two or three years, bicycle-style wheels were ousted as tyre technology developed to cope with the increase in weight, power and speed. Cars of the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost era ran on elegantly spoked and sometimes rather baroque wooden wheels. Early racing cars relied on a mass of steel spokes to keep their wheels from falling apart as they volleyed and thundered along rutted roads and dusty tracks.

The idea of styling wheels or covering them with decorative trim (hubcaps) came in the Twenties, when steel and aluminium discs ousted wood and wire spokes. Rolls-Royce coachbuilders late in that decade took a delight in covering the massive wheels of their Brobdingnagian cars with stainless steel hubcaps polished to a mirror finish. But it was Ettore Bugatti who created the couture car wheel. The eight-spoked aluminium wheels synonymous with the famous Le Mans-winning Bugatti 35B were as beautiful as they were functional. They remain the finest ever.

But long after the Bugatti 35B - up until the Fifties, in fact - most cars outside the United States were equipped with very basic wheels, politely covered with a painted hub- cap. Sports cars had painted wired wheels (chrome-plating only gradually ousted paint); British sports cars in particular remained loyal to the spoked wire wheel until safety legislation and huge increases in power gave manufacturers cause to doubt their efficacy in the early Seventies.

The classic British chromed wire wheel used, for example, to take an E-Type Jaguar up to 140mph, was held on to its hub by a 'spinner'. The faster the spinner spins, the tighter its grip on the wheel; but when a spinner was screwed on to the wrong wheel it would spin the wrong way. By the time a car was up to racing speed, the inevitable would happen - the driver would see a wheel skimming solo along the road behind. This is why when you study one of these oh-so-British wheels, you find arrows and directions stamped into them; a loose screw would be insanity on an E-Type.

The Americans chose to cover disc wheels in fashionable trim (chrome, chrome and more chrome) and to set this off with 'white-wall' tyres. The fashion spread to this country (remember the ridiculous Austin Metropolitan? The car's white-walled tyres and wheels were so well hidden under its flamboyant American bodywork that it had the greatest difficulty getting round corners) and the Continent in the late Fifties, but never really caught on. The idea of covering workaday wheels with fancy dress racing trim did, however, spread from Ford in Britain through Europe to Japan.

Ford pioneered the commercial use of fake 'Rostyle' rally wheel covers for its 1967 Cortina 1600E and Rover used them on its palatial 3.5-litre saloon. This cemented the craze for customised wheels. From the late Sixties, car magazines were padded out with advertisements for extravagant wheels or wheel covers; they still are, although many of the wheels which are on offer today through accessory companies such as Genesis Engineering really do improve the look of everyday cars. They are also thoroughly engineered and immensely strong.

Few companies offered cars with unadorned wheels much after the Second World War. The wheels of a very basic car like the first production Volkswagen Beetle were uplifted by what look like polished steel bra-cups. Even Alec Issigonis, the frills-free engineer who designed the Mini (1959), gave in to chromed hubcaps to hide the tiny and revolutionary 10-inch wheels of his miniature masterpiece (these have since been increased to 12 inches to give a more comfortable ride). It was left to Citroen, quirky as always, to buck this decorative trend. Its 2CV made a virtue of its capless wheels, the retaining bolts that held the wheel to the car exposed for all to see.

Hubcaps began to go out of fashion in the Eighties, when they were replaced by wheels sculpted in the Bugatti fashion of half a century before. This was partly because hubcaps have a tendency to drop off on potholed roads or when brushed against kerbs. Wheels of the past 10 years have recaptured the glamour of their Twenties and Thirties predecessors. They are often highly styled; many are impressive essays in automotive sculpture. Look at the 'pepperpot' wheels of a Series III Jaguar XJ6.

These distinctive wheels changed the character of Jaguar's impressive saloon; it was as if the big car - first designed in 1968 by Sir William Lyons and, with some revisions, still in production until last year - had been given the sort of face-lift that ageing Hollywood starlets can only dream of.

In recent years, the aluminium wheels used on Porsches and Mazdas have been equally impressive. They are punctuated with tear- drop cut-outs that not only look good, but provide cooling for brakes.

But perhaps most exciting of all are the highly styled and massively spoked wheels fitted to such futuristic sports cars as the Audi Avus, first seen this year. These echo the wheels of such seminal sports-racing cars as the Bugatti 35B but do not ape them; designers of fast modern cars cannot afford to wallow in nostalgia.

Wheels are very unlikely to disappear, although there are other ways for a road vehicle to travel - caterpillar tracks (which would be be well suited to potholed streets) and a cushion of air are two possibilities. But the wheel, shod with a high-pressure rubber-compound tyre is, as yet, the most efficient - and comfortable - way to keep a car on the move.

However, there are cars that have tried for at least part of their lives to move without wheels. The bizarre little Amphicar of the early Sixties, based on Triumph Herald mechanicals, was one. The Amphicar could be driven straight off the road, down a ramp and into a river, where a propeller under the boot gave it forward motion while the wheels became a set of gloriously inaccurate rudders. The car did work, although as it was prone to leak and thus rust, it was not destined for a long life.

Dan Dare, 'space pilot of the future' and star of the Eagle comic, drove a finned and chromed hover-car that appeared to be powered by a jet engine. As Frank Bellamy, Dan Dare's creator, dreamt up this car as long ago as 1950 and as no manufacturer has put it into production, it seems as if cars are as likely to hover along our roads as pigs to fly. Anyway, as the Merton Parkas might have put it, a car ain't a car without wheels on its hubs. And wheels - from the 10-in tiddlers of the first Mini to the high-striding, high-tech automotive couture of the Audi Avus - define a car.-

(Photograph omitted)