There’s something that all cars share – well all but George Jetson’s – and that’s a set of rubber donuts that keep the ride from scraping on the pavement and actually lets it get things done. Keeping those donuts from rolling away are wheels, and over the decades those have offered car makers and owners alike opportunities to make their vehicles stand out from the crowd.

The earliest wheels were little more than the wooden jobs lifted straight from horse drawn carts, or spindly wire affairs taken from bicycles. Wire wheels continued on while wood gave way to steel, and in some cases fancy-pants alloys. The wider selection of materials also imbued car and wheel makers with the opportunity to create unique styles for their wheels, and boy, have there been a lot of them.

Wheel styling is about as evocative an indicator of a particular automotive era as are fins and quantity of chrome. As such, what we want to know today is your opinion as to which era might have represented the ‘golden age’ of wheel styling. Do you pine for the art deco designs that wheel covers took on in the late thirties? Or, do the rectilinear looks of the eighties – like the squared Chinese Checkers styling of the Isuzu Impulse wheels – rock your world? Let us know what you think has been the best era for wheel styling.

Image sources: Auto Classiche, VW Vortex, IndianAutosBlog