When modifying a car, wheels are a great place to start. They can be relatively inexpensive for how much they change the aesthetic of a car, and there’s often a performance gain to boot by reducing weight or adding width. But the biggest benefit for some cars is getting rid of truly heinous factory wheels. We asked for your least-favorite stock wheels, and your answers ranged from broad descriptions to specific, terrible depictions. Here are some of the best.
These Corolla wheels trigger my OCD like none other
There’s a trend in these answers, where designers make no consideration for the location or shape of actual wheel lugs when designing wheels. This Corolla wheel is one of the worst offenders, with machined lines hitting the lugs seemingly at random. Bad wheel.
Always thought these were hideous.
They look gaudy aftermarket wheels, but they aren’t.
If you had asked me this morning for the peak of GTI design, I would have said the Mk7.5 was the platonic ideal of a Golf. But having looked at approximately one thousand photos of the Mk6 for this slide, I’ve been converted. The Mk6 is the ideal GTI, you may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like.
Any wheel where the number of spokes is not evenly divisible by the number of visible lugs.
These ND Miata wheels aren’t the worst, since that title goes to the Corolla, but they aren’t ideal either. Even dating back to the original NA Daisy wheels, the number of lugs has never matched the number of spokes. The mind reels.
Tesla’s
Ug Fuglioooo
As thisismyid2 points out, the wheels under those caps look fantastic. But the aerodynamic covers, crucial for eking out the last bits of electric range, ruin the whole design.
This awful CRV wheel. Ugh.
I’m going to have nightmares about these. They don’t even represent a traditional spoke in any way, looking more like an extreme close-up of a circuitboard than any wheel. Who did this to you, CR-V?
Directional wheels, they sometimes look ok on one side where the direction makes sense with the motion of the wheel... but they always look awkward to down right stupid on the other side where the direction of the wheel and the direction of the design are going against each other.
Directional wheels, when facing the proper direction on both sides, can be a great look. But when the same wheel is rotated all around the car, one side will always look wrong.
Unpopular opinion:
Before seeing these wheels up close, I would’ve called bobrayner a radical, assaulting our very way of life with these hot takes. But having looked closer, each circle of the phone dial look has a rim that gets wider as it goes around. That’s weird, and they earn their place here.
How about Chevy putting a square peg in a round hole?
These wheels would’ve been extremely cool in the mid-eighties. By the early nineties, though, they overstayed their welcome. You can’t have a car with curves, and a wheel with squares.
Subaru Forester snowflake wheels. Looks bad with the different number of spokes and lug nuts.
Another entrant in the Too Many Spokes, Too Few Lugs series. I pray that automakers don’t learn the wrong lesson here, and begin adding more lugs to passenger cars. But, at the rate vehicles are growing, it’s not impossible.
Honestly I don’t think any of the Taycan’s wheel options look especially good, but these standard 19" Aero design wheels have to be the worst. I’m sure they serve a function but they are outrageously ugly.
Poor, poor Taycan. The car looks incredible. It’s available in a soft rose tone, which absolutely rules. But those wheels? Sure, they add range, but at what cost?