Hubcap
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Hubcap.jpeg
A hubcap or wheel cover is a decorative disk on an automobile wheel that covers all of the lug nuts that attach the wheel to its axle. Cars with alloy wheels, and before them, trucks, often do not use either.
Hubcaps came first, and were very small, sometimes merely covering the grease bearing of the wheel. These snap onto bulges on the wheel, and to change the wheel they are pried off with a tool resembling a very large slotted-tip screwdriver. This differs from the spinners that serve the same purpose for racing cars and those cars with wire wheels, which were designed to be quickly unthreaded by hand. Most hubcaps were once made of chrome-plated steel.
The rest of the wheel was originally of wood or many fitted metal parts. When pressed steel wheels became common, these were often painted the same color as the car body. It was these steel wheels that had the lug nuts that the hubcap expanded in size to cover. The next development was, as an option on more expensive cars, a chrome-plated trim ring that clipped onto the outer rim of the wheel, right at the tire. Finally came the wheel covers itself, which of course covered the entire wheel. By this time, specialty wheels of magnesium or aluminium alloy had come on the market, and wheel covers were a cheap means of imitating the styling of those. Wheel covers can now be found made of plastic moulded in gray.
Often a hubcap will bear the trademark or symbol of the maker of the automobile or the maker of the hubcap. Early hubcaps were often made of chrome, and many had decorative, non-functional spokes. Hubcaps were immortalized in the Art Deco styling of the spire of the Chrysler Building in midtown Manhattan.
Part of the lore of wheel covers is that on bad roads they have a tendency of falling off due to hitting a bump. In the southwest of the US, and in Mexico, there were lots of automotive garages whose walls were decorated with all sorts of wheel covers that had fallen off in the vicinity; they were often for sale.
In the US, during the age of custom cars (1950s-early 1960s), decorating one car with the wheel covers from another was common. Two very desirable wheel covers were those of the 1950 Cadillac (called the "Sombrero") and that of the 1953 Oldsmobile, which resembed a huge, three-tined spinner. In a sort of homage to the former, Moon-brand hubcaps and wheel covers were some of the first independently offered for hot rods and custom cars.
External links
- Gallery of Cadillac hubcaps (http://www.car-nection.com/yann/Dbas_txt/mascotsg.htm).