- Cars like the '57 Chevy and the late model Lincoln Town Car look great when dressed with the white wall tire. There are two ways to make a whitewall. You can create it as a whitewall from the start, or you can add the whitewall after making the tire. Adding the whitewall stripe on afterward allows you more control over the quality of the finished product. Tire companies make most of their whitewalls in this fashion today. A finished tire is mounted on a tire spinning machine, the sidewall surface is roughed up for better pigment adherence, then the whitewall rubber is bonded to the rest of the tire through a process called vulcanization. It is then trimmed and touched up. Computerized whitewall machines, such as the CIMA 850, autonomously produce whitewall tires with stunning perfection and completely remove the human error factor from the entire process.
- Tires were introduced around 1902, and they were made using white rubber. Cars like the 1904 Auburn had been fitted with pure white tires on the front and back. After a few years of use, it was obvious a change was needed. The white rubber tires had extremely poor traction, and in the rain, they were virtually useless. Then the manufacturers started adding carbon black to the white rubber. However, the carbon black was more expensive than the white rubber mixture, so they left the sidewalls white and just used carbon black on the treads. After all, the treads were the only part of the tire that came in contact with the road surface, so the decision was cost effective. That started a variety of tire models created with different amounts of the white walls showing. What was at first an economic feature then became an aesthetic one.
- In the 1930s, the white wall tire grew in popularity amongst wealthy luxury car owners. The gleaming white sidewalls were a status symbol during that time, and the cleaner the car owner kept his white walls, the more heads that turned as he drove by. By the 1950s, car manufacturers started streamlining cars to keep them lower to the ground for better aerodynamics. They began shrinking the width of the white wall stripes on the sides of tires to lower the overall profile of the car. In the late 1950s, a model of the Cadillac Eldorado had white walls with just a one-inch stripe along the sides.
- After this point, the popularity of the white wall began to drop off. By the early 1960s, the whitewall had faded into obscurity. After that, there were only a handful of models that came with stock white walls. In the 1970s, the white wall enjoyed a comeback of sorts in major metropolitan areas. After a short-lived rebirth, the white wall fell out of favor again in the late 1970s and has pretty much remained that way since. However, some companies like Diamond Back Classics, Coker, Lucas Classic, and Vogue Tyre still sell white wall model tires. The one thing that has not changed over the years for the white wall is the difficulty in keeping them clean.
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