Wheels

WHEELS ARE ARGUABLY THE MOST important component of a motorcycle. Some would disagree, suggesting that the engine plays the more dominant role — after all, without that, you don’t even have a bicycle. What you have is known as a “hobby horse” or “pedestrian curricle”, sometimes called a “Draisine” after Karl von Drais, who patented his design in Germany in 1818. Lacking pedals, motive force was by pushing with the feet, which was at best amusing on the flats, hard work uphill, and, lacking any form of braking, downright terrifying downhill. By contrast, an engine with no wheels is known as a stationary engine for obvious reasons. With it, you can thresh wheat, split logs or put it to any other industrial application. But it won’t be transporting anyone anywhere soon.

Part of my internship as a trainee car designer nearly 40 years ago involved creating a new pressed steel wheel for the Chrysler Alpine — a car that failed to match its target of competing with the Volkswagen Passat as spectacularly as the Chrysler Horizon failed to equal the VW Golf. Believe me, I owned a Horizon, albeit mercifully briefly. But compared to my other tasks of designing door-handles and front grilles, all of which could be drawn with a ruler in 1980, it wasn’t a bad project. Wheels inevitably have curves; otherwise they aren’t too comfortable to drive on.

While wheel designs were always extremely important to cars,