In the late 50s and 60s the US car companies tried to bring products to market different and innovative. Tire companies and independent consultants explored every market trend and personalization in order to obtain advantages over its competitors. Goodyear saw that the light was beginning to loom large in the world of tuning, and therefore decided to launch a lit tires . Seriously, this is a true story.
How did they do?
From day they were not spectacular. But when night fell … they were spectacular.
First, Goodyear engineers designed an transparent rubber compound . It could not have been completely transparent, but at least translucent. This experimental synthetic compound became a tire using traditional building techniques and mounted tires on several vehicles. To achieve this wonderful backlit effect, dashboard lights were installed on the inside edge of the rim of the car, directly connected to the battery.
As a result, you could have an almost transparent tire, lit with an impressive sensationalism. Just imagine the long exposure photographs that could have been taken, in addition to the tremendous possibilities for the world of the preparations. In terms of security, would have made much more visible at night to cars an obvious improvement to security. The invention came to appear even in Life Magazine, and was featured in a marketing campaign at the time.
were the high costs and limited commercial viability which put paid to the project.
But he went nowhere. First, was extremely expensive compound to produce. Although this was the main factor involved in the abandonment of the project, there were other factors to consider. For example, Goodyear had difficulty transmitting electrical power into the tires. Another problem was that after just a few kilometers rubber tire lost transparency and ended up acquiring a brownish tone, giving away with the desired transparency.
Would it have been all these problems can be solved? Possibly with the investment of time and money properly. An investment that Goodyear declined in the 60s: the conventional tire business was booming, and preferred to cash managers face innovate attractive dubious products. Still, it was an interesting project that no one has seen trying to revive. We wanted to rescue him, so it is not lost in the depths of Internet files.
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Source: Petrolicious | Jalopy
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