Carl F. Thelin

I started another piece like this:

In the 1950s, when a bunch of engineers were sitting around for coffee and donuts, sometimes we asked ourselves, “What would it take for us (our industry) to make a car with a sealed hood for 100,000 miles?”

The same sort of stuff went on as I worked as an R&D engineer at Uniroyal. What would it take to make tires last that long – which would be like forever, in that era.

We had experimented with tires cast of exotic elastomeric materials. Some were colored and translucent. No there was not much chance to “tune” the car’s ride and handling without variations of sidewall and tread fabric plies such as rayon, polyester synthetics, and ultimately – steel.

Sidewall shape – the aspect ratio – which became known as “low profile cross section” was one faddish variable that was all over the place. Ditto for the tire tread thickness and pattern.

Oh boy! Would our lifetime tire be smooth-running and quiet in summer or a noisy chunky tire for snow and ice? If we went with stiff sidewalls and the “Wide Oval” look for better handling, would the buyer be happy with ride harshness?

What we knew as required was simple: every passenger car should have four pairs of tires on their own wheels. Like over the road truckers, we though the front tires should be a pair of “steer” tires for summer and another for winter. The rear pairs would be wider and focused on traction. Spreading the use over eight tires is one way to get to 100,000 miles, right? Of course, many would opt for one set depending upon the prevailing climate.

Forget about the so-called spare tire and wheel. Use the money to buy a road-service contract. Besides, it is dangerous to change a tire yourself at night, especially when rain is obscuring other drivers’ vision. Forget about expensive “run-flat” tires, too. You’ll get mileage without the weight of the jack, too.

Nuts! This kind of break-room talk ended when the market flooded with front wheel drive vehicles. Next we were hit with a flood of all wheel drive SUVs.

So we just keep trudging along with what we have.