This story is still amazing to me. The wheels are finally here and I still don't really believe it. Anyone that may of been associated with FWD Drag Racing for a while might remember a very rare, not very used drag wheel built by BBS back in the late '90s, early 2000's. I have known about these 4x100 BBS Drag Wheels since approximately 2004 when the only 2 sets that I knew of in existence belonged to Stacey Hyche and Tracey Hyche who ran a NDRA Turbo 4 Integra and a NDRA Comp 4 Civic. They were also offered in a 5x114.3 version that you could see on some Supra's including Daniel Willie's Batlground Supra and the AAP Racing Supra's back in the NDRA heyday. But other than that I have never seen them for sale or seen them on any other cars. About 3 years ago knowing they existed I went on the hunt for a set. Naturally I started to follow the trail of Tracy and Stacey Hyche's cars to see where they ended up. Stacey's car seems to be gone, I can't find any information at all on that but Tracy's Integra bounced around a bit to some owners / members on the Honda-Tech forum. I found the current owner of it and after about 4-5 months of talk I was finally able to buy that set. Extremely happy that I owned what I thought to be 1 of the only 2 sets in existence I left it at that. I had them completely torn down, refinished, fully polished and assembled with ARP hardware. They now sit in my office for the time being.
Fast track to the Daytona Beach Turkey Rod Run, November 2012. I happen to live about 35 miles from the venue so I like to go out there for a day every year and see what we can find. It is a hot rod, vintage, classic car show, swap meet and car corral mainly but there are a wide array of vendors, swap meet participants, etc, etc. A couple of us spent the entire day out at the show always enjoying ourselves and we were on our way out of the show when one of the guys spotted something strange. A gentleman had a single BBS 15x3.5 5x114.3 Drag Wheel sitting on his display table. Of course a conversation struck up and we come to find out a buddy of his just took over the Motorsports division at BBS USA and came across a bunch of wheels including the 5x114.3 Drag Skinnies and wait for it........... the 4x100 BBS Drag Skinnies as well !!!!!!!! Shocked, that is the only word I can use to describe stumbling upon this deal. Super random place, super random time and super random gentleman that had access to all the New Old Stock Inventory on wheels that 99.9% of the public had no idea existed. Naturally the deal making started from there. I immediately told him I want all the 4x100 drag stuff you can get your hands on. Months and months of back and forth went by as they worked to try and get me an exact number of 4x100 15x3.5 wheels and an exact number of 4x100 centers to make complete sets. Today is the culmination of 4 months of persistence and patience. We had a pallet of BBS Drag Wheels arrive, all 4x100 bolt pattern parts that include (24) 15x3.5 BBS Rear Skinnies and (31) BBS 4x100 Drag Centers !!!!! Absolutely amazing to me and still a very strange, very lucky, very fortunate find.
If you know anything about BBS you know they are a large multi national corporation that does everything from OEM Wheels to the highest level of Motorsports racing wheels. These are about the best quality wheels for any purpose that you can purchase. During this process I spoke with the guys at BBS and they informed me of the out of control testing standards required of any BBS wheel for them to put their stamp on it. You want to know why you never really saw these take off when they were supposedly on the market in the early 2000's ? The retail price on the 15x3.5 skinnies was approximately $1100 USD per wheel !!!!!! But that is what you have to pay I guess when you want a one piece, 15x3.5 wheel that incredibly weighs only 6.5 lbs.
So here is what we have. We have (11) pairs of 15x3.5, 4x100 wheels for sale and (14) pairs of 4x100 centers for sale. We have access to all of the barrels required to build the front wheels still directly from BBS as they still use those sizes in other forms of motorsports so we can build a variety of 13" wheel sizes including at the very least 13x8 and 13x9 sizes. I am keeping my original set from Tracy Hyche's car that I have restored and IPG Employee Tom is getting a set for his car as well.
Strangely during this entire process we found another set of these out and about that I hope is the 2nd missing set from Stacy Hyche's car perhaps in Colorado. So far we have been unable to get an exact number on how many of these wheels were built but as you can tell they are very, very limited and there are no plans in any way at all to manufacturer them again. Of course any information that anyone else has available to bring to the table we are all ears and would love to learn more.
Since we have started showing pictures of these wheels being here we have had a huge number of inquiries on pricing, quantity, etc, etc. I want to be as fair as possible on selling these off and as soon as I put a price on them and actually start taking orders I foresee them to be gone very, very fast. Our plan is to release pricing and start taking orders all at one time to be announced ASAP. I am just waiting on BBS to get me the price files on the barrels and miscellaneous parts we need to be able to purchase to make complete 13x8, 13x9, etc front wheels so I can have official pricing. This is literally the chance you never knew existed and your last chance to purchase these wheels in brand new condition ever. You will see these pop up on the used market in the near future for more than the asking price is going to be. Think Weld Wheel pricing plus about 10% and you can get an idea of what we will be asking for them so a very, very reasonable deal.
Wow, still amazed over here. It is days like this that make me love doing what we do.
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