The width, offset and inner and outer barrel sizes on vintage JDM wheels were one of those things I always thought were somehow correlated, but never invested time into this. I ran into a very interesting classified ad on Yahoo Auctions for some SSR Formula Mesh wheels, and it caught my attention because of the sizes. I started to investigate and ran into an article on Kaido Racer blog, explaining the SSR size. Thanks to their article, it all became much clearer now how there is a relation between wheel size, offset and type.
This Fortran Drag Wheels advertisement has so many WTF?!s in it that I simply don’t know where to begin. I did feature the Fortran Revolt wheels before and those wheels also had some interesting advertisements. But these Drag wheels, oh boy! Let’s just unravel this ad. Layer by layer, detail by detail.
Fortran Drag Wheels advertisement – I don’t even know where to begin…
Gigantic woman towering the Manhattan Skyline
I think we can first start with the 1980s airbrush painting of a giantic woman which I can best describe standing in a Kiba-dachi stance towering over the Manhattan skyline. Her right high-heeled shoe is standing on top of the water in the Upper Bay or the Hudson River.
Chained up woman over the Manhattan skyline
Is she wearing 1970s plateau shoes? She’s holding chains that seem to be coming from somewhere in downtown New York. The chains seem to break somewhere in the middle, but her arms don’t seem to suggest she is the one breaking it with force. On the contrary: she’s just holding them. Maybe the chain is put on a high voltage and now the centre link is disintegrating?
Over the moon and Jupiter
Giant moon and Jupiter. That gravitational pull must be immense!
Behind the woman on the left, there is a gigantic moon. If the moon were this close to the earth, probably New York would have been flooded by the immense force of Moon-gravity. On the right of the woman, we can see a planet. Presumably, this is Jupiter. What is it doing there?
Another Skyline
Nissan Skyline GT-EX KGC211 floating in the Hudson River
The Manhattan skyline isn’t the only skyline in this advertisement. At the bottom of the advertisement, we can see a facelifted Nissan Skyline GT-EX C211 with a big golden 2000 GT Turbo sticker on the side of the car. Oy has some huge bubble-shaped over fenders and looks just like it was inspired by its Group 5 contemporaries. Why it’s floating on top of the water we don’t know. What we do know is that the wheels featured on this car are Fortran Drag Wheels. Even the license plate tells us so.
Drag, the Dynamic wheel – Fortran really knew how to create a good tagline!
Above the woman, we can also see DRAG in bold painted letters and the tagline the Dynamic wheel. Why dynamic is written with a capital D is a mystery to me.
Conclusion
So, what do I make of this? If you look at all these pieces separately, it doesn’t make sense at all. The chain, the moon, Jupiter, the floating Skyline GT-EX, and the woman over the Manhattan skyline. Nothing makes sense.
That is until I realized the randomness of all these things must have a meaning. The Fortran Drag wheels are called the Dynamic wheel for a reason. They need to be dynamic in any situation: a too-close-for-comfort moon with a huge gravitational pull. Rescuing a Godzilla-sized woman who is being chained down. Floating with big balloon-sized tires on your Fortran Drag wheels. Yes, it all makes sense now!
Fortran wheels sticker: sticks to a stubborn artisan spirit
You may think what was he smoking? Revolt against Fortran which are mega rare Japanese alloy wheels? Yes, I wasn’t aware of these wheels myself until I found a brochure for sale on Yahoo Auctions. I wasn’t interested in the brochure, but rather more the big REVOLT on it. This is the brochure in question:
This photos was taken from the bus somewhere outside Jayapura when we passed Mandala Motor. I already spotted them a few times and they had a vast number of wheelporn in their workshop.
Mandala Motor
The convertible appears to be a VW bug that was modified with a Celica Z10 nose by Lipu…
This is about the coolest wheel pic I’ve seen this month:
Glow in the dark rims!
The only problem is that you need to shine some light on it first… So, where can I get some of that paint to accentuate my 15 inch Celica XX rims?
This video from 1993 clearly shows (some) BBS wheels are produced in Japan. A bit weird for someone living next to Germany expecting a German wheel manufacturer to actually produce them in Germany!
A little research learned that the Japanese company Washibeam produces the BBS F1 Magnesium wheel and all one piece Aluminum racing wheels. They sell those wheels back to BBS Kraftfahrzeugtechnik AG and vice versa for the other wheels. In this way the production of the wheels can continue even if either BBS or Washibeam go bankrupt.
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