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I FREAGIN LOVE CUSTOM WHEELS (*BUT CANNOT SELL THEM)
Nothing changes a car build - or makes bigger lap time drops - than a max fitment set of wheels and the proper tires. Buying wheels is one of my favorite things to do, and most of our shop builds have 3-5 sets of wheels for each. Sometimes we run two different types of tires (200TW vs Hoosiers), or different classes, all to steal as many track records and trophies as we can.
While we used to sell a lot of wheels, we never made any money at it. Tires were even worse, with the consolidation of the tire wholesale companies like what happened with the Discount Tire and Tire Rack merger. We are lucky to make $10 on a tire sale, but often we would LOSE money on tires once we factor in shipping if we sold at the Tire Rack retail price.
This whole conversation brings up frustrations, as we have spent hundreds of hours coming up with unique wheel and tire fitments, doing track testing of tires, etc. TIRES ARE EVERYTHING and everything we do on the suspension is to maximize the efficiency of the tires. Yet, we cannot make money selling either wheels or tires. It took me nearly 2 decades to figure this out. I even wrote this exact post once, then deleted it for fear of burning bridges.
Vorshlag has always been about "maximizing" wheel and tire widths on all cars, as our track test data keeps showing us there is NOT an obvious point where lap times get slower with ever wider wheels. We have proved this on light / lower powered cars as well as heavier / powerful cars.
If there is a limit, we have not found it yet. Yes, "rolling resistance" goes up slightly with wider tires, as does aero drag, but the higher speeds in corners and those on the straights after those corners keeps going up.
VORSHLAG'S HISTORY WITH BESPOKE WHEELS
Back in the early 2000s we custom ordered CCW 3-piece wheels (they are owned by MW wheels now) for several builds, as that was what you had to do "back in the day" to fit custom wheel widths. 3 piece wheels are still a thing, but with custom built forged billet wheels and so many flow formed wheel options now, they are a much smaller portion of the wheel industry.
Some of those wheels we had made unlocked a lot of lap time / grip potential, led to some big wins, and produced logged data that confirmed our "Big Tires Matter" mindset. I also started making custom flares for some cars to fit ever wider tires, and my romance with giant tires led to even more wins.
This obsession with running wider tires led us to start ordering custom 1-piece flow formed wheels to make fitments that most wheel makers were too scared to stock or support. This 18x10" setup on our 1997 M3 shown above was one of those we did more as a dare, because the internet said it could not be done. Well we fit 275mm tires on 18x10" under stock outer fender contours, and proved the haters wrong. Wider wheels support any tire width better, and wider tires fitments were also possible.
When the 2011 Mustang GT 5.0 model came out, the S197 (2005-2013) Mustang chassis had almost no wide wheels available, other than some wildly overpriced BBS wheels in 18x10". So we tested some things, had D-Force make a custom run of 18x10" wheels for us (in a higher load racing) that fit this chassis front and rear in 2011, and that kicked off the first "Vorshlag" wheel selling part of our business. These first 100 D-Force wheels even came with "Vorshlag" center caps! (of course all plastic center caps MELT and fall off when you track them, so almost none of them remain)
Vorshlag had been selling D-force wheels for BMWs since 2007, helping this company come up with several new sizes and offsets with direct testing we did. We sold 1000s of their wheels over the years - before rival wheel companies copied every size, width, and offset we helped come up with. These new players always priced their offerings just a bit less - and the "race to the bottom" (of margins) on all flow formed wheels had begun.
I didn't learn this lesson well enough in the 2007-11 D-Force era, and we started spec'ing custom widths and offsets for Forgestar flow formed 1-piece wheels in 2012. This set shown above proved not only could we fit 18x11" wheels under stock S197 fenders, with a few other tricks we could fit 18x12" wheels under the rear fenders. That got us noticed - and our red 2011 Mustang above was on the Forgestar website for over a decade - as we were one of the first shops to use F14 wheels in Motorsports.
We made a ton of bespoke wheels with this company for a lot of cars. The 18x12F/18x13R C6 Corvette widebody set (below left) was a popular one, and we made hundreds of sets of wheels for the S197 and S550 Mustangs - most without the need for spacers. The C5 Corvette was a tricky one but we came up with a unique 18x11" setup that fit the stock fenders, too. We got a lot of calls about wide wheels, and made a decent number of sales, but by 2018 it was obvious - the copy cats were back and they were making every offset we came up with, down to the millimeter.
The main wheel company we worked with from the early days had their own challenges. They had an annual Black Friday Sale and that meant that a huge chunk of customers only wanted to buy wheels during this period to save $200. The other flow formed wheel companies are falling into the same trap now, too.
The sizes and offsets we wanted were always bespoke, and frankly there were too many wheel style / concavity / color options. This meant the right wheel blanks had to come into the country, then be sent out to be machined to our spec's, and go out again to be powder coated to the colors the customer wanted. Problem is, none of those steps happened in-house at Forgestar, and they would "batch" wheels for machining and again by color for powder coat. This often added 6-12 weeks early on to a bespoke wheel order, and that's if they had the blanks in stock.
Nobody wants to stock anything these days - as the margins are too right in this business. If I could have bought "container loads" (400+ wheels!) at a time, I would have barely made any more margin, too. But with what money? I ran the numbers and they always sucked for me, but if I had shelled out 6 figures to stock 2 wheel offsets in 2 colors we could have cut down on the custom order cancellations (that number was approaching 50% at the end, when lead times stretched to 6-8 months).
It was simply not possible to stock all of the colors, wheel widths, offsets, and car model coverage that we sold via their bespoke program - as we sold wheels for nearly a dozen different cars, in about 20 colors, with unique offsets front and rear for each car. The margins just didn't make sense for the HUGE risk and capital outlay to stock "everything" - either at Forgestar or at Vorshlag.
Forgestar also could not stock enough of the blanks we kept ordering, and that would often add another 2-4 months to any order we placed. And with 80% of their sales all happening during the Black Friday sale periods, they usually ran out of the blanks we needed for at least 3 more months. What began as a 2 month lead time in 2012 slipped to 6-8 months by 2018.
With the "Amazonification" of virtually ALL buyers by then, almost nobody would wait that long. The LA port closure of 2021 really tanked their supply chain and it never fully recovered. Then Forgestar added a +$600 "bespoke wheel charge" to anything they didn't have made fully over there, and that was the end of our public wheel sales.
Other challenges before the 2021 "end" included somewhat vague accounting that led to an increasing number of "mystery" sale tax bills and shipping costs that changed wildly from order to order. These problems (esp. the mystery taxes) worsened when Forgestar was bought and sold a few times - first bought by Weld, then bought by MOMO, and they are now part of a giant "MW Wheels" company that had about a dozen companies under it. Those led to sales where we literally lost money - not even counting the time we burned selling the wheels, talking to customers 3-6+ times while they waited, refunding orders, etc.
We sold custom spec'd MOMO wheels for a bit, because the custom MOMO wheels were still done through Forgestar, but all bespoke MOMO wheels went away by 2021. We calculated we were losing thousands of dollars a year selling ALL brands of wheels, and it just made sense to stop the bleeding. We stopped selling MW wheels and all other brands to the public in 2021.
FORGESTAR WHEELS ARE STILL GREAT
While this seems like a pile on of Forgestar / MW, they still make a great wheels - flow formed, in many styles and sizes, for a good price and a light weight. I will defend this brand's wheels quality and robustness - and D-Force - to my dying breath. I have put tens of thousands of miles on these two brands wheels, and they caught flak for every yahoo that clobbered a curb and bent a wheel. ALL WHEELS ARE CONSUMABLES and there is no indestructible wheel style / method / brand.
A quick look at our SmugMug "Project" page shows 21 Vorshlag builds on Forgestar or MOMO or D-Force wheels. Heck, damn near every track car we have in the shop is still sporting Forgestar F14s. Because when we bought them they were the best option for a custom wheel that didn't break the bank. I will still probably order a Forgestar wheel in the future, or Apex, Jongbloed, or any of the half dozen brands we are still direct with. Just cannot sell wheels to customers and make it worth our time / expense / hassle.
I miss the early days when I used to be able to call and talk to the same salesman we had for many years, or even get founder of the company - now they don't even answer their phone. The distribution used to be direct, then through one of 7 MW "territories", and now I can only get to them through an email. Last set we bought from them was in 2022. But the wheel industry is cut throat, and I don't blame Forgestar for selling to Weld, or for Weld to sell to MOMO. Consolidation is what happens for many motorsports companies, but they are often unrecognizable from their earlier forms.
WHAT DOES ALL OF THIS MEAN?
I don't have any wise words about the wheel industry at the end of this post, other than don't try to resell wheels that somebody else makes. We have had opportunities to buy two different wheel companies, but in the end the numbers just didn't add up. It is a capital intensive, inventory heavy, supply chain nightmare, low margin business - and that's before you add in another layer of dealers who want to gobble up what little margin there is.
There are too many players making great wheels now, and most of those will admit they don't need another layer of "middle man" (like Vorshlag) to siphon away their thin precious margins. I get that, but just I wish we could do something with the mountain of knowledge we have when it comes to spec'd custom wheels and fitting massive tires to several car models. Over 20 years after starting Vorshlag, I cannot for the life of me figure out what that is.
Thanks for reading.
Nothing changes a car build - or makes bigger lap time drops - than a max fitment set of wheels and the proper tires. Buying wheels is one of my favorite things to do, and most of our shop builds have 3-5 sets of wheels for each. Sometimes we run two different types of tires (200TW vs Hoosiers), or different classes, all to steal as many track records and trophies as we can.
While we used to sell a lot of wheels, we never made any money at it. Tires were even worse, with the consolidation of the tire wholesale companies like what happened with the Discount Tire and Tire Rack merger. We are lucky to make $10 on a tire sale, but often we would LOSE money on tires once we factor in shipping if we sold at the Tire Rack retail price.
This whole conversation brings up frustrations, as we have spent hundreds of hours coming up with unique wheel and tire fitments, doing track testing of tires, etc. TIRES ARE EVERYTHING and everything we do on the suspension is to maximize the efficiency of the tires. Yet, we cannot make money selling either wheels or tires. It took me nearly 2 decades to figure this out. I even wrote this exact post once, then deleted it for fear of burning bridges.
Vorshlag has always been about "maximizing" wheel and tire widths on all cars, as our track test data keeps showing us there is NOT an obvious point where lap times get slower with ever wider wheels. We have proved this on light / lower powered cars as well as heavier / powerful cars.
If there is a limit, we have not found it yet. Yes, "rolling resistance" goes up slightly with wider tires, as does aero drag, but the higher speeds in corners and those on the straights after those corners keeps going up.
VORSHLAG'S HISTORY WITH BESPOKE WHEELS
Back in the early 2000s we custom ordered CCW 3-piece wheels (they are owned by MW wheels now) for several builds, as that was what you had to do "back in the day" to fit custom wheel widths. 3 piece wheels are still a thing, but with custom built forged billet wheels and so many flow formed wheel options now, they are a much smaller portion of the wheel industry.
Some of those wheels we had made unlocked a lot of lap time / grip potential, led to some big wins, and produced logged data that confirmed our "Big Tires Matter" mindset. I also started making custom flares for some cars to fit ever wider tires, and my romance with giant tires led to even more wins.
This obsession with running wider tires led us to start ordering custom 1-piece flow formed wheels to make fitments that most wheel makers were too scared to stock or support. This 18x10" setup on our 1997 M3 shown above was one of those we did more as a dare, because the internet said it could not be done. Well we fit 275mm tires on 18x10" under stock outer fender contours, and proved the haters wrong. Wider wheels support any tire width better, and wider tires fitments were also possible.
When the 2011 Mustang GT 5.0 model came out, the S197 (2005-2013) Mustang chassis had almost no wide wheels available, other than some wildly overpriced BBS wheels in 18x10". So we tested some things, had D-Force make a custom run of 18x10" wheels for us (in a higher load racing) that fit this chassis front and rear in 2011, and that kicked off the first "Vorshlag" wheel selling part of our business. These first 100 D-Force wheels even came with "Vorshlag" center caps! (of course all plastic center caps MELT and fall off when you track them, so almost none of them remain)
Vorshlag had been selling D-force wheels for BMWs since 2007, helping this company come up with several new sizes and offsets with direct testing we did. We sold 1000s of their wheels over the years - before rival wheel companies copied every size, width, and offset we helped come up with. These new players always priced their offerings just a bit less - and the "race to the bottom" (of margins) on all flow formed wheels had begun.
I didn't learn this lesson well enough in the 2007-11 D-Force era, and we started spec'ing custom widths and offsets for Forgestar flow formed 1-piece wheels in 2012. This set shown above proved not only could we fit 18x11" wheels under stock S197 fenders, with a few other tricks we could fit 18x12" wheels under the rear fenders. That got us noticed - and our red 2011 Mustang above was on the Forgestar website for over a decade - as we were one of the first shops to use F14 wheels in Motorsports.
We made a ton of bespoke wheels with this company for a lot of cars. The 18x12F/18x13R C6 Corvette widebody set (below left) was a popular one, and we made hundreds of sets of wheels for the S197 and S550 Mustangs - most without the need for spacers. The C5 Corvette was a tricky one but we came up with a unique 18x11" setup that fit the stock fenders, too. We got a lot of calls about wide wheels, and made a decent number of sales, but by 2018 it was obvious - the copy cats were back and they were making every offset we came up with, down to the millimeter.
The main wheel company we worked with from the early days had their own challenges. They had an annual Black Friday Sale and that meant that a huge chunk of customers only wanted to buy wheels during this period to save $200. The other flow formed wheel companies are falling into the same trap now, too.
The sizes and offsets we wanted were always bespoke, and frankly there were too many wheel style / concavity / color options. This meant the right wheel blanks had to come into the country, then be sent out to be machined to our spec's, and go out again to be powder coated to the colors the customer wanted. Problem is, none of those steps happened in-house at Forgestar, and they would "batch" wheels for machining and again by color for powder coat. This often added 6-12 weeks early on to a bespoke wheel order, and that's if they had the blanks in stock.
Nobody wants to stock anything these days - as the margins are too right in this business. If I could have bought "container loads" (400+ wheels!) at a time, I would have barely made any more margin, too. But with what money? I ran the numbers and they always sucked for me, but if I had shelled out 6 figures to stock 2 wheel offsets in 2 colors we could have cut down on the custom order cancellations (that number was approaching 50% at the end, when lead times stretched to 6-8 months).
It was simply not possible to stock all of the colors, wheel widths, offsets, and car model coverage that we sold via their bespoke program - as we sold wheels for nearly a dozen different cars, in about 20 colors, with unique offsets front and rear for each car. The margins just didn't make sense for the HUGE risk and capital outlay to stock "everything" - either at Forgestar or at Vorshlag.
Forgestar also could not stock enough of the blanks we kept ordering, and that would often add another 2-4 months to any order we placed. And with 80% of their sales all happening during the Black Friday sale periods, they usually ran out of the blanks we needed for at least 3 more months. What began as a 2 month lead time in 2012 slipped to 6-8 months by 2018.
With the "Amazonification" of virtually ALL buyers by then, almost nobody would wait that long. The LA port closure of 2021 really tanked their supply chain and it never fully recovered. Then Forgestar added a +$600 "bespoke wheel charge" to anything they didn't have made fully over there, and that was the end of our public wheel sales.
Other challenges before the 2021 "end" included somewhat vague accounting that led to an increasing number of "mystery" sale tax bills and shipping costs that changed wildly from order to order. These problems (esp. the mystery taxes) worsened when Forgestar was bought and sold a few times - first bought by Weld, then bought by MOMO, and they are now part of a giant "MW Wheels" company that had about a dozen companies under it. Those led to sales where we literally lost money - not even counting the time we burned selling the wheels, talking to customers 3-6+ times while they waited, refunding orders, etc.
We sold custom spec'd MOMO wheels for a bit, because the custom MOMO wheels were still done through Forgestar, but all bespoke MOMO wheels went away by 2021. We calculated we were losing thousands of dollars a year selling ALL brands of wheels, and it just made sense to stop the bleeding. We stopped selling MW wheels and all other brands to the public in 2021.
FORGESTAR WHEELS ARE STILL GREAT
While this seems like a pile on of Forgestar / MW, they still make a great wheels - flow formed, in many styles and sizes, for a good price and a light weight. I will defend this brand's wheels quality and robustness - and D-Force - to my dying breath. I have put tens of thousands of miles on these two brands wheels, and they caught flak for every yahoo that clobbered a curb and bent a wheel. ALL WHEELS ARE CONSUMABLES and there is no indestructible wheel style / method / brand.
A quick look at our SmugMug "Project" page shows 21 Vorshlag builds on Forgestar or MOMO or D-Force wheels. Heck, damn near every track car we have in the shop is still sporting Forgestar F14s. Because when we bought them they were the best option for a custom wheel that didn't break the bank. I will still probably order a Forgestar wheel in the future, or Apex, Jongbloed, or any of the half dozen brands we are still direct with. Just cannot sell wheels to customers and make it worth our time / expense / hassle.
I miss the early days when I used to be able to call and talk to the same salesman we had for many years, or even get founder of the company - now they don't even answer their phone. The distribution used to be direct, then through one of 7 MW "territories", and now I can only get to them through an email. Last set we bought from them was in 2022. But the wheel industry is cut throat, and I don't blame Forgestar for selling to Weld, or for Weld to sell to MOMO. Consolidation is what happens for many motorsports companies, but they are often unrecognizable from their earlier forms.
WHAT DOES ALL OF THIS MEAN?
I don't have any wise words about the wheel industry at the end of this post, other than don't try to resell wheels that somebody else makes. We have had opportunities to buy two different wheel companies, but in the end the numbers just didn't add up. It is a capital intensive, inventory heavy, supply chain nightmare, low margin business - and that's before you add in another layer of dealers who want to gobble up what little margin there is.
There are too many players making great wheels now, and most of those will admit they don't need another layer of "middle man" (like Vorshlag) to siphon away their thin precious margins. I get that, but just I wish we could do something with the mountain of knowledge we have when it comes to spec'd custom wheels and fitting massive tires to several car models. Over 20 years after starting Vorshlag, I cannot for the life of me figure out what that is.
Thanks for reading.