ALL SCI-FI

[bulldogtrekker]

The Mystery Of The Illuminated Goodyears
by Ryan, JalopyJournal


For years, the image you see here has floated around the internet with little to no information attached. In fact, a common caption reads something like this:

"In 1961, Goodyear developed an illuminated tire."......

.........."Wait a second," I said. "You worked at Goodyear in 1961? Have you ever heard of or seen illuminated tires?"

Gerald laughed. "I assume you've gotten those emails too, huh? Yeah. I was there then and while I wasn't involved with that project, I do remember it. How could you forget something so ridiculous?"

I got the scoop fellas!

As it turns out, illuminated tires were actually brought to Goodyear by an independent research and development firm in the late 1950's. Back then, the folks in Detroit kept a close eye on market trends and they couldn't help but notice some of the crazy tires folks were using on custom cars. So when the idea of illuminated tires surfaced, Goodyear decided to produce a set and test viability.

At the time, Goodyear was already well into messing with synthetic rubbers and had been experimenting with a petroleum based rubber that was damn near transparent. So they took a set of tires made of this weird ass rubber and mounted them on a set of wheels that had small dash lights mounted around the inner rim.

"During the day, they didn't look all that impressive at all," Gerald said. "But at night, it was pretty wild looking."

"So," I asked. "Why didn't Goodyear go to market with them?"

"A number of different reasons put a halt to the effort," Gerald said. "For one, the rubber was too expensive to make tires from. Ultimately, that's what killed the project. But also, there were a number of hurdles to get over even if they could have gotten the rubber down in price. They had problems with consistently getting power inside the wheel to the bulbs at an affordable price. And, the rubber didn't stay clean enough after regular driving for the effect to work. If, for example, you went to the grocery store and then back home again, the tires would lose their transparency just from regular rubber wear."

And well I'll be damned! The mystery of the Illuminated Tire is no more.

LINK: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/?p=27881

[Bud Brewster]

Tires?

What tires?

I don't see any tires?

Ooooooh, there they are! Right next to those lovely legs.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

I suspect that they would also have been less durable than conventional tires. I worked in an industry that made extensive use of O-ring gaskets. The manufacturers offered their O-rings in various colors to identify the O-ring material. However, coloring the O-rings involved leaving out the carbon powder that made them the traditional black color. It turned out that the carbon also imparted other properties that were desirable, so when our customers started asking for color-coded O-rings, our Chief Engineer refused on the basis of it being a quality issue.

I thought that this was an essential piece of information to spread around.

More to the point, how about that coiled wire connected to the tire rim (next to the leg, Bud). I wonder if that thing flopped around while the car was in motion. It kinda looks like it needed to be really flexible, the way it's coiled; perhaps attached to a fixed point on the tire rim by a swivel contact, thereby flexing as the tire spins.
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...or not...

WayneO
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