The right custom tire and wheel combo can make a humdrum sedan look cool and can transform a rather plain (at least as far as a Corvette can be considered plain) C5 into an eye-popping work of automotive art. My pewter '00 coupe, complete with standard silver-finish OEM wheels, used to fit into the plain Jane Corvette category-great for stealth but, well, almost boring.
The Mid America Designs "Hot Seats" custom upholstery really woke up the interior, and the simple addition of MagnaFlow's "Wide Open" exhaust with its four big polished outlets added both some distinctive character and sound to the car.
When Mike Sweeney of Corvette...
When Mike Sweeney of Corvette Wheel Specialists pulled the first HRE 549 wheel out of its box, I was almost speechless (and that's a real rarity). The custom hoops turned out even better than I'd expected.
I had my excuse to go over the edge after we completed installing Wilwood's C5 Big Brake kits on the front and rear of my coupe. The car, with its stock five-spoke wheels, had been used by Wilwood Engineering for portions of their fitment process to ensure that their 13-inch front brake and six-piston caliper would work on any '00 and newer C5 with stock wheels-without the need for any sort of spacers, adapters, or modifications. The brakes were/are fantastic, but were still shrouded by stock silver-finished wheels; I now had something super trick on the car, and it didn't even show up. Stealth can be good, but it would be nice to have a standout once in a while.
Okay, I couldn't use the Wilwood brakes to justify new tires and wheels-or could I? It seemed as though we'd barely gotten the brakes bedded in when, as I mentioned at the end of the brake installation article ("Late Braking News," Oct. '03), the crew at Wilwood informed me that within a matter of weeks they'd have a wild new 14-inch, bolt-on front rotor and caliper setup for the C5 ready for evaluation, and would I like to try it out. That's a dumb question! And since the even bigger brakes required a minimum of an 18-inch front wheel, that was all the excuse I needed to go off the deep end.
With the sensor held in place,...
With the sensor held in place, our installer hand-threads the chrome-plated factory retaining nut, then tightens it securely with a deep socket. If the nut is not tightened enough, you will have a slow (3-5 psi/day or more) leak from the wheel.
HRE Performance Wheels manufacturers some of the finest, highest-quality wheels available-superb engineering, impeccable finish, and a wide array of sizes, designs, and finishes for C4 and C5 Corvettes, as well as other premium-sports and high-performance cars and SUVs from around the world. All HRE wheels are three-piece (individual forged aluminum inner and outer rims sections, and a separate center, CNC-machined from a forged billet of aluminum). The nine designs in their 540 series are completely compatible with the tire-pressure sensors on C5s. The 540-series wheels are offered in 17-, 18-, 19-, and 20-inch diameters and in widths ranging from 7-13 inches (they also offer custom widths and offsets). Since all HRE wheels are built to order, a wide array of finishes are also available.
As long as I was going off the deep end, I figured I might as well go extremely deep, and so I sat down with Mike Sweeney of Corvette Wheel Specialists to order a set of HRE wheels for my still-nameless pewter coupe. (HRE doesn't have pallet racks loaded with wheels ready to ship; each set is custom-manufactured to the customer's specifications.) I'd already figured the tire sizes I'd go with, based primarily on Z06 sizing but with a larger-diamter (18 rather than 17 inch) front wheel, and stayed with the Z06's 18-inch rear diameter for a couple reasons-there are a lot more 295-millimeter cross-section tires available for 18-inch diameter wheels than for 19s or 20s. And, the larger the diameter of the wheel, the shorter the sidewall (aspect ratio) of the tire must be to maintain a close-to-OEM overall tire/wheel diameter. I'm not a big fan of tires that look like big black rubber bands, and tires with extremely short sidewalls tend to ride extremely harsh-and the rigid sidewalls necessary (to allow the tires to be driven with little or no air pressure) on the stock run-flats are bad enough on a daily driver. While it's possible to bolt-on wider-than-Z06 wheels on C5s, I couldn't see any point in it. I'm not after extreme performance with this particular Vette; its primary duty is to be a fast, good-handling, good-looking, reliable, and comfortable commuter car.