first year gm using a 17" wheel

[camaro427-69]

does anyone know the earliest year a GM production car used a 17" wheel? reason i´m asking is our freaky law in austria. when we get our cars registered there´s a wheel/tire combination in the registration and for our historic liscence it needs to be stock. so instead of my 14" i´m running 17" on my camaro and i always have to be scared that if the police pulls me over to a check they could take my plate and send me to a overall gouvernment car check. so i asked the guy at the department if i could get another tire/wheel combo registered and he told me that i could use a production wheel that was built 10 years before to 10 years after the build date of my car. good for me is that those weirdos registered my 69 as a 1971 camaro what means i can go till 1981 to search for wheels. i just found out that corvette used a 17" wheel on the 1988 C4. other information was a 16" compact spare that the 81 camaro used but just spare is useless. maybe someone can come up with different infos maybe even on torque thrust or other aftermarket wheels with a historic background.....

thanks,
pat

[BonzoHansen]

I think the 88 c4 is the first 17.

[CreepinDeth]

so i asked the guy at the department if i could get another tire/wheel combo registered and he told me that i could use a production wheel that was built 10 years before to 10 years after the build date of my car.

Nothing within 10 years of a 1969 Camaro.

Is it that big of a deal ??

[camaro427-69]

Nothing within 10 years of a 1969 Camaro.

Is it that big of a deal ??

yep!!!!!!!! to get a license the car needs to be bone stock original, we can cheat a bit cause nobody here could tell if it´s my original 307 or the all aluminum 540 cause it´s just a huge piece of metal with 8 wires going down to 8 sparkplugs but it doesn´t need a high educated cop to realize that 265/40R17 don´t look like the 215/60r14 in the car papers. and if he´s pissed or his wife yelled at him at breakfast he can take your license plate and you can call for a trailer......
how about 16"?

[mc84_zz4]

First year of 16" wheels was the 84 Corvette, IIRC, then the 86 IROC Camaro, both of those a few years shy of 10 year over 1971.
I recall BBS wheels being available in 16" for BMWs, Mercedes, early 80's, not sure if that helps...
Buschman Brothers and AMG were tuning Porsches and Mercedes around that time, and they may have used a wheel in 16" (prob BBS), as far as I know, there were no 17" for cars until late 80's.
Pirelli P6 (or P7) was the king back then, used on Lambo's etc, but those were also 15" wheels IIRC. Pirelly did have 16" tires and they were 295 and maybe even a 305 IIRC.

[camaro427-69]

thanks guys but the problem is that i´m not even allowed to use aftermarket wheels, probably torque thrust would work. they told me that it needs to be a original GM wheel used on production models. the TT could work out because they were famous and a part of the "muscle history" seems i need to stay "illegal".......

[neki67]

You could go for a Dutch license/registration . . . . . ;-)

[camaro427-69]

somehow it´s weird cause actually there´s a law that if a certain setup was TÜV approved in a EU country it has to be legal all over europe. i even know about a company in austria specialiced in us-cars and he built a 67 mustang with almost everything the aftermarket could provide and he registered the car this way. he just told the guys at TÜV that the car was a special series from a huge Ford Dealer in California and got everything registered......seems like you just need to include some extra green in a envelope to get what you want......

[68Formula]

Closest I could find, is the 1982 GM Trucks came with 16" wheels. Probably not the right bolt pattern. But if you get Stockton Wheel to make a set of steel wheels to your specs and call them 1981 Truck wheels...

What about Opel and Holden?

[camaro427-69]

i´m gonna check them but anyways i think if there was no wheel on the vette i don´t think that any GM car had bigger ones.......