Fat Tires & Black Rustoleum

Irvine Meadows West Parking Lot, Irvine, California

June, 1990

 

I had a pair of universal-fit (slots instead of holes for the wheel studs- very safe!) El Cheapo van-style rims (complete with Super Shops brand bias-ply 275 tires) left over from a 1968 Mercury Cyclone I had once owned.  They'd been sitting in the Orange County sun for a couple of years, but they seemed OK (a year later, one of them had a catastrophic blowout on the 680 freeway), so I put them on the Impala and painted them with black Rustoleum barbecue paint.  This looked so wretched that I just had to paint all the chrome trim flat black to match, which ended up looking like a parody of the blacked-out-trim "euro look" so popular among owners of lowered front-wheel-drive cars at the time.