I love standard 20vt wheels in black or dark grey. Makes the car look mean, especially when lowered.

Absolutely agree.

The original wheels are the best, especially the LE ones.

Blimey, you've got the handbrake sorted on the Portofino! Mine wouldn't hold on that slope

But I don't think we would need too many. I would have 5/6 alloyes allowing for spares etc. Might be worth an investigation

Hi Mark.

The 20 V Turbo is what we affectionately call a ‘P.I.T.A’ I’m sure you can work out what those letters stand for

We have looked at quite a few options to work with this car and not all have been satisfactory. Some owners try wheel spacers, often with PCD variation bolts (not so many 4x98 wheels available) and we don’t really deem this as being safe, especially with a high number of owners wanting to do track days etc. Also, I haven’t been able to find a decent supply of commercially available aftermarket wheels – certainly things from the Team Dynamics or Compomotive ranges fit but not everyone likes the designs

As the standard wheel is a 16” single piece design it would take quite a bit of money to make the tooling and moulds necessary to do a production run of 17” Off the top of my head it would probably take an order of around 4000 pcs to make it viable. What I can try and do is, if you email me some decent pictures of the wheel, email this out to some manufacturers and see if we can get any feedback.

Worst case scenario is looking at a 3 piece custom design, maybe with a billet centre but this will have to have an outer lip so the wheel wouldn’t match 100%

Email me some pics and we can look further into this.

Regards

William Murphy

LOL - if you look very closely just under the back left wheel you'll see our brake failsafe system i.e. a bloody great brick!

I did search for six years to find the ones I liked and looked "factory" enough. This meant no letters, no fake screws or unneccesary features, just a clean design that would mirror the edgy lines of the Coupe. Especially with the LE/Plus-kit coming up.

http://sfk.ibk.se/depa/showfile.php?carpic_no=2353&type=picture

They are Liquidmetal static with GoodYear F1 Assymetric 225/35-18. Not on car yet but in April!

Think mine are quite similar ...

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll270/robshed/DSC00501.jpg

And.. those Liquidmetal Static's which Per posted the link to look very good! Might have to investigate.

Hi Mark

I haven’t had much time to look at this due to holidays etc.

Any of the wheel manufacturers we have contacted as yet haven’t come with any positive answers but I have on going enquiries with an Italian firm and one big manufacturer in the far east.

You wouldn’t happen to know who the OEM manufacturer is?

Will keep you updated.
Regards

William Murphy

Hi Mark

Just to point out my previous email stating 4000 pcs would be needed was a typo!

I spoke to speedline directly, quite a useful exercise actually.

As suggested the Speedline OEM plant did cast the 20v wheel under license for Fiat – they would be legally bound not to supply that particular wheel to us (its 16” anyway). As an alternative they suggested making new casts for a very slightly different version of the wheel in 17”, design changes just to get around the licensing agreement with Fiat. Basically the tooling costs have to be taken into account. I think 500 wheels would be needed to make this viable to supply a wheel at a sensible price.

Maybe these figures are a bit more reasonable? I don’t know what sort of following the coupe club has but if you can get the numbers/financial backing etc.

I’ll make some calls etc on Monday and try and get a better idea of what 500 wheels would cost. The custom option is still there but again trying to get a design everyone likes in a 3 piece is tricky. Same cost issues if we ask a custom manufacturer to do a single piece.

To put this in perspective, our contact out in Asia produces 16 million wheels a year.

Hope this gives you a little hope!

Regards

William Murphy

Hi

Yes, I can look at colour options depending on numbers, worst case scenario I can get wheels painted in the UK separately if the numbers for say anthracite are small or if you get silly enquiries for a couple of sets of yellow, blue etc (you never know)

I did a production run of Speedline wheels for a VW forum in the USA, these guys wanted OEM style but the originals hadn’t been produced for years. Ok, I was able to get the wheels cast as the moulds were in existence in the sizes required. I also did a small batch of bronze wheels for these guys

Have a look at this thread http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=3741669&page=29

Really just a confidence boost for you, your enquiry is a bigger step due to the quantity and tooling etc but it shows we can tackle more unusual jobs.

Regards

William Murphy