Battle of the Rims

If you love cars and everything about them, chances are that you most probably want to put your own stamp on your ride.

Working on your ride, you might feel like Da Vinci working on a masterpiece – as you should, because every personally customised car is a work of art in its own right.

Undeniably, your wheels are the biggest asset on your ride, how else would you drive around looking classy?

That’s why you might want to make sure your wheels rest on some beautiful rims.

Playing ‘Need for Speed: Underground’ and most of the games thereafter, everyone went crazy with all the personalisation you could do with virtually any car. However, in reality, it’s a different ball park and it take much longer to get your ride where you want it.

It all, unfortunately, doesn’t just happen at the click of a button.

Personally, I am a BBS guy. I don’t know what it is, but I just love them. Must have been love at first sight.

However, there are tons of rims that can be really delicious eye candy. With brands such as Konig, OZ and Enkei, there are rims out there for all car lovers who want to groom their wheels.

Gerald Titus, a 20 year old Namibian living in Windhoek, would love to 17 inch BBS rim in silver with a touch of black on his ride. ‘I would prefer it on a Ford Bantam, it’s just more appealing to me and it’s my kinda style,’ he said.

‘My favourite rim on a car is a five star.’ That’s what Robert Chizabulyo said when it comes to his preferred rim. ‘I would want it on a Toyota Run X, all black with a silver lining, 17 or 18 inch on a low profile wheel. That would also be my special toy,’ Robert said.

Silver and black seem to the popular choices on wheels and so does the ‘five star’ design as Bernard Chunga’s favourite rim is the one on the Audi RS 7.

‘It looks kind of like a star rim, but has different features. A black and silver one or all black would be better if it is an 18 inch rim,’ he said. ‘The handling and speed of a car works much better with this rim as it is designed to handle more pressure and heart,’ he added.

According to complex.com, the top five best aftermarket wheel manufacturers are:

OZ knows that the best way to provide the best product isn’t to seclude yourself but to ask others for input and help. The company has a huge list of quality control tests, including ‘fatigue test wheel subjected to the same mechanical stress of a car driving along a bend’, ‘chemical analysis on raw materials and castings’ and ‘impact test (crash test) simulation of stresses that the wheel might suffer on the road’.

This brand will probably be seen on a hot rod, a low rider truck or a classic Camaro. America is in the name for a reason, after all. The quality of the wheels match their tough looks and are usually made of pressure forged aluminum alloys.

Enkei is everywhere, because they’re a highly respected brand out of Japan. They make racing, tuning, luxury, truck and classic wheels. The company created its own testing process called Spec E, which takes it one step further than the regulation standards.

They use digital Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FMEA), Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and a casting simulation to ensure that any stress points do as little damage as possible to the alloys. Many car manufacturer wheels are actually Ronals, they just don’t have the Ronal branding.

BBS isn’t actually all that aftermarket. Many of the rims that Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes Benz and Porsche use as their stock wheels are BBS. The company has perfected the forging process and has created flow forming, which uses three hydraulic rollers and a huge amount of pressure to form the width of a rim.