Wheel • 8 x 15″ Silver • GTAm

An 8×15” version of the original 13” GTAm wheel.

Alfa Romeo, Ford and other manufacturers racing in the 1970s, made widebody versions of their race cars in order to fit wider tyres in an attempt to improve grip and therefore competitiveness. Tyre designs at the time were very antiquated compared with the compounds and constructions we have today, so the only option in the 70’s was to make tyres ever wider. Race tyres of the period were all huge in diameter which made it necessary to use 13” wheels in order to fit the wheel wells and retain sensible gearing. This inevitably meant compromising on brake disc size and limiting the scope to improve suspension geometry but this was considered secondary to the benefits of using a wider tyre.

Fast forward to the 21st century and vast improvements in tyre design and compounds mean that ultra wide tyres are no longer necessary and, in fact, can often be detrimental if the chassis is unable to work the tyre up to its operating temperature. 13” wheels have also fallen out of fashion with modern car design and consequently good 13” tyres are very hard to find. The only choice in 13” is to use either a modern semi-slick race tyre or a period high profile Dunlop CR65 race tyre. Semi-slicks offer good grip but the small overall wheel/tyre diameter causes serious ground clearance issues for road / track day use. Increasing the ride height merely results in a ‘skateboard’ appearance. The alternative is to fit period race tyres but they are not legal for road use and their cross-ply construction makes the car vague and track cambers badly, not to mention being terrible in the wet! So, it raises the question; why spend lots of money and effort creating a lovely GTAm look but suffer appalling compromises and difficulties with a 13” wheel & tyre combination?

You can have a stunning GTAm look wheel but in 15” diameter to suit high performance modern road and race tyres. The larger diameter also allows the use of our 4-pot and 6-pot brake conversions, neither of which are possible with a 13” rim. It also permits the use of the Alfaholics Geometry Kit which gives a significant improvement to the handling characteristics.

We have spent a lot of time and effort with 3D CAD programming perfecting the shape of this wheel, especially the oval hole design, to ensure that it accurately replicates the original wheel, rather than the incorrectly shaped holes of reproduction 13” wheels.

NOTE: These wheels will not fit cars with standard bodywork!