Wheel Colour Combinations

[Tony Blythe]

I'm sure I read somewhere (but I can't find it on this site) that during the 1960's VW changed the colour combination of paint on the wheel rim & hub. I think, but this is why I'm writing this inquiry, is that initially the rim was the same as the body colour of the car whereas the hub was cream/white. At a particular point in the '60s this was reversed so that the rim was now cream/white & the hub was the same as the body colour.

At a later point in time I believe VW changed the wheel colouring again to black.

Did I dream this or get the change-over sequence wrong ? Assume that these colour changes were the same for all Beetles including Cabrios ?

Hope someone can help with some / all of the above.

[glutamodo]

Not usually the same color as the body, but rather a complimentary color matched to the body color. 1960 was the last year for dark-on-outside. 1961-63 had a lot of shades of color for both the inside and outsides of the rims. 1964 things got simpler and it was black on the inside and either Pearl White or Blue White on the outsides. That's about how it was through 1966, then in 67 it went to a low gloss Grey Black on the insides and Lotus White or Cumulus White on the outsides. That changed to Cloud White on the outsides for 1969, the final year of two-tone wheels.

Convertibles, since they came with trim rings stock, had no need to be two-toned.
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Andy T.


IMAGE NOTE: It has been noted that Chrome based browsers may have issues in displaying my vast image library, which use non-secure links and are on an FTP server. Images should still be viewable if the link is clicked though.
I do not know how to fix this. All I can say is it all works fine for me with what I use, Firefox.

[Irish911]

[glutamodo]

Well in 1960 all wheels had Pearl White on the inner hub and one of like 9 different colors on the outside of the wheel. The only one of those that was the same as body color was black. In 1961 there were 7 different dark colors, now applied to the hub of the wheel, and 7 different light colors applied to the outsides of the wheels. This time only one of those colors were the same as the car, Pearl White. (Black, on the other hand had Slate Gray on the inside and Stone Beige on the outside) My own 62 is the same, in that Pearl White that year was the only color scheme where the body color was also on part of the wheels. So while there were some exceptions, not very many.

For me it's not too hard to review these in general terms because I own a print copy of both volumes of Garwood's Car of the Century book, where all paint schemes are gathered on one big 4-page chart per model year. You can look up much of this data on Wolfsburg West's color chart page but you have to go one year/color at at time. And also, I don't look at them very often but I seem to recall a lot of gaps or missing info on them.

http://www.wolfsburgwest.com/colors/colorchrt.cfm
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Andy T.


IMAGE NOTE: It has been noted that Chrome based browsers may have issues in displaying my vast image library, which use non-secure links and are on an FTP server. Images should still be viewable if the link is clicked though.
I do not know how to fix this. All I can say is it all works fine for me with what I use, Firefox.

[Irish911]

Thanks for the link Andy. Dumb question but what part of the wheel is the "wheel disc (center)" and what part is the "rim (outer)?

[glutamodo]

Uh, when you have two tone wheels it's etiher the hub or outer rim parts. One the wheels I painted up for my 62:

And in 1960 the darker color was on the outside of the wheels:

_________________
Andy T.


IMAGE NOTE: It has been noted that Chrome based browsers may have issues in displaying my vast image library, which use non-secure links and are on an FTP server. Images should still be viewable if the link is clicked though.
I do not know how to fix this. All I can say is it all works fine for me with what I use, Firefox.

[Raisedup58]

1961 was the first year for the reversed color combos. Although throughout the years some early cars had Inversed color combos such as kalahari beige.

1964 was the year they went to black and white combos on all model colors. On some late 60’s convertibles they had solid black wheels with chrome trim rings.

This is a pic of some of my collection. At the bottom and very top left of the pic is some original paint wheels off of a 1955 L275 light beige car. You can see that the hubs are sealing wax red and the rim color are a complementary color for the body color

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[Busstom]