1953 Kaiser Manhattan

[jake]

 

[amkfken]

Just my opinion, this car looks better with black sidewalls than the wide whites that seem to be the rage---- they were an extra cost option and still cost more $$$!!!!

[Roadmaster49]

Well, I will agree the blackwalls look fine on this car BUT it does have a white top, so whitewalls might as well.  I was never a whitewall fan never having seen them new.  Now that you bring it up, I wonder if anyone has ever done an expose or written piece on why there were whitewalls in the 1st place? 

[Aeroman]

No engine pics, but this car boasts a 226 V-6, according to the seller.

[Bobm90]

I have seen white (totally not just the side wall) rubber tires on early autos both American and European, so my theory is white sidewalls are a throw back to that, and besides that they look Kool.   

[Bobm90]

OK checked with Wikipedia, they have a picture or rubber latex being harvested from a rubber tree, it appears to be white, maybe that's why early tires were white, I will try to include a picture, why am I researching rubber? Maybe I have too much time on my hands !!

[Corsairdeluxe]

My college chum in graduate school has a couple of dozen patents and several million dollars from research in latex. If you are serious look him up.

http://patents.justia.com/inventor/travis-honeycutt

[Aeroman]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the black substance was added to the liquid rubber to make it stronger. Black is not the natural color of rubber.

Found this when I asked google why tires are black: "The black color of tires comes from carbon black, a readily-available material that provides greatly improved wear characteristics and heat-dissipation capabilities when added to rubber compounds. Natural rubber is off-white in color, and in fact the first rubber tires were white."

[Gordie]

In the earliest days of the automobile the tires were all black and did not even have air in them but were solid hard rubber on metal rims.  Later as pneumatic tires came into vogue the tires were all white and around 1910 they were black again.  In the late 1920's the tire manufacturers offered white walls that were seen on the higher priced cars and it gave them a look of elegance and the tires really stood out.  White walls were available all through the thirties but those were depression years and white walls were an extra cost and were not really popular until the 1940's and most cars were advertised with white walls but they were always an extra cost over black wall tires.  The white wall tires became the widest in the thirties and forties and early fifties and in 1954 the tire industry narrowed the whitewall width by about an inch and in the sixties you could find side walls in red, blue or green as well as double and triple white stripes and with the advent of radial tires they were all black and they were not offered with white walls at first and white walls went out of style as the high cost of radial tires made the extra cost of whitewalls prohibitive price wise.  Today several tire manufacturers offer white wall tires to fit most cars from any era.  Our Kaisers and Frazers were all sold with black sidewall tires as standard equipment but whitewalls were available at extra cost and were a very popular option and today it is unusual to see one that is restored with black side wall tires.

[Roadmaster49]

Thanks Gordie.  Very interesting. 

[Carpenter]

As a rookie on the dock I got to unload an 18 wheeler of carbon black.  You do not wipe anywhere, even if sweating profusely, and at the end of the day you throw clothes and underwear away.  There is no way to rescue them.