Pics of after market wheels NOT lowered

macmaster doesn't know trapezoid from square

 

I don't make this shizen up people!

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L7]L7 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

Please tell us more about your machine gun. Where do you have it mounted on your Prius?

 

honestly, the real reason i lowered my car was not for looks, but rather a lower center of gravity and better spring rates to reduce body roll. thankfully i live in an area where i don't scrape at all even with the lowering.

 

And cars fail (marketing wise) all the time, so they can be wrong, about matters of taste.

Until one hits a rock...

 

Have you ever been to a modern car show or looked at concept cars? lol

I don't hit rocks. The roads are clean where I live. With great handling and mad driving skillz I can avoid road debris. : p

 

LOL

I do like the look of the 17" wheels on the Prius V, but I thought the gap between the top of the tire and the wheel well looked goofy. Glad to see that a number of people agree that the gap is a bit big for the tires in question.

I contemplated getting aftermarket rims for my car, but then realized that maybe I didn't want to spend all the money (probably the difference between being 45 vs 25 years old.....). Still, I really do like the look of the lowered Prius with the wider tires.

 

The 15"-wheel Prius has this same gap so how's your current car any different?

What some people who want to upgrade to bigger wheels but are reluctant to drop it are concerned about is whether it'd look more goofy relative to the stock 17"- wheel Prius. Unfortunately, this is tricky and the only way to be sure is to get the exact same wheel specs as peterjmc's or Matt Ackerman's car as an example.

 

I completely understand.

The great thing about lowering springs is they increase handling almost as well as 17s or 18s. They fall short due to the narrow width and taller sidewall of a 15" tire though. I feel you can get away with a larger wheel without lowering on a Genii but the Geniii is questionable because it's appears to have more wheel well gap.

The great thing is you can choose one or the other and have great handling but the wheels will drops your mpg some and tires cost more. Combine the two mods and the car handles pretty damn good!

 

I think the difference is that the sidewall of the 15" is taller relative to the 17" tire and lends a better "ratio" of height relative to the wheel well. I guess what I'm saying is that the the lower profile of the 17" tire makes the gap seem even larger, even if the gap height is identical between the 15" and 17" tires.

 

When I was shopping for my car, I considered the pkg V, but I tried to be realistic with myself.
1. I commute 70 miles daily, mostly on freeways, thus I would rather have a smoother ride rather than a harsher ride.

2. Despite the actual difference that 2 - 3 mpg would cost (15" vs 17") I am a "hypermiler" and always have been (maybe not to the extremes of others, but as Popeye would say, I am what I am). I would always wonder what I "could" have gotten with 15" rather than what I was getting with 17" tires.

3. There are a few "clover leaves" and round abouts where it would be fun to push the tires a bit during my commute, but the other 69.5 miles are boring, straight freeway. And, honestly, it's a Prius. If I wanted a great handling car, the Prius would not have been my first choice. And while handling is a fun thing (and a great safety feature), it would be underutilized in my case.

4. The 17" wheels look so much better than the 15" wheels (and aerodynamics be damned, the wheel covers are just odd). But, I don't ever see the wheels from inside the car. Maybe when I'm walking up to the car, it would look good, but otherwise, I never see them. Heck, many times, I think my car is dark charcoal grey instead of red, because my perspective is from inside the car.

5. And despite all that, I still wanted to get a pkg V, and then I researched the tire replacement costs. Ugh. I like my cars to be inexpensive to operate. Between gas mileage and tire replacement costs, the 15" tires = winner.