Shopping for Auto Parts: Finding the Best in Hubcaps/Wheel Covers

Hubcaps—otherwise known as wheel covers—are decorative coverings over the lug nuts that hold a wheel in place on an axle. Often cars with alloy wheels don’t have hubcaps or wheel covers. There are many different styles and price ranges, and sometimes a style is adopted by youth cultures as part of a defining quality. In fact, hubcaps and wheel covers have had enough of an impact on American cultures that some people actually collect them as antiques. A hubcap can either fit over the lug nut area only, cover the whole wheel area, or fall somewhere in between. Many of the older hubcaps were smaller, and covered a wheel made of wood. In the 1940s steel wheels came into use and larger hubcaps started being used.

Auto Parts and the Internet: Finding Hubcaps & Wheel Covers Online

There are many internet sites where you can browse selections and collections from 1949 forward, and you can even send photos of the ones you have if you’re missing one and don’t know what to look for. There are people who are experts in hubcaps and wheel covers and can find exactly what you’re looking for in minutes, where it may take you days to locate just the right thing.

Today there is a new style of hubcap called the spinner, which has a piece that spins freely even though the rest of the wheel has stopped and the car is not moving. You can also buy add-on kits for many spinners, which can be a more cost-effective way to roll in style. Some also have the color wheel painted on it that spins around.

Some of the attraction to collecting hubcaps is the mystery surrounding them. Many times a car will hit a bump and a hubcap will come off. Someone else will come along and find it, and save it. Even with current technological advances of all kinds, hubcap loss persists and people still collect them. Many businesses have been started by people who simply collected too many hubcaps and had to start selling them off to avoid ending up in divorce court!

Although there is very little use for a hubcap, they can give your car a finished look. If you want to keep them on your car, you can ask for a zip tie to be put on them. This will help hold them in place so they don’t end up on the wall of a used hubcap store.