Re: Goodyear tires
Well, this required some research before I shoot my mouth off some more. The initial discussion was for Polyglas GT's. Bear in mind that back in the day Goodyear produced the Wide Tread, Wide Tread GT, Polyglas, and Polyglas GT, all with that cool little lettering.
I, too, dug out my old archives and looked at the new car features from '69 to '70. Here's what I found (keep in mind the print lead times of a couple of months):
1.Hot Rod June '70: Goodyear Polyglas GT ad shows a '70 Boss 302 with F-60-15 Polyglas GT with no size, while the pretty girl standing next a loose tire off to the left has "Polyglas GT F-60-15" added by the art department to the face of her tire. My guess is Goodyear found that the size was a marketing advantage and added it to the GT design in Œ70.
2. Marty Schorr's CHEVROLET THE PERFORMANCE YEARS, a book compiled of Schorr's archives from his time at CARS Magazine. One picture shows their ZL-1 Camaro test car, wearing 15" Wide Tread GT's (no size). Another shows a black COPO owned by an employee of Greenwood's race shop in Troy, MI. It's wearing "Wide Tread F-70-14" (sized, non GT) tires on 14x7 Ralleys.
3. Car and Driver, Jan '70: Olds 442 ad wearing "Goodyear Polyglas G-70-14" (sized, non GT) Same issue has a 70 Cougar Eliminator ad wearing "Goodyear Polyglas" (no size, non-GT, 14").
4. CARS April '69, Baldwin Chevrolet's Ed Simonin's personal '69 RS Z/28 fitted with "Goodyear Wide Tread GT's" (no size).
5. Super Stock and DI, Oct '69: '70 Hemi Cuda with no size Polyglas GT's, '70 GTX with 14" no size Polyglas (non-GT), '70 Challenger 440 R/T with 14" no size Polyglas GT's, '70 Mach 1 with no size 14" Polyglas (non-GT), Buick GS455 with no size 15" Polyglas GT, '70 Chevelle 454LS6 with sized F-70-14 Polyglas (non-GT). These are all very early cars, and the LS6 was a preproduction "teaser" for the press about what was coming midyear.
6. CARS Nov Ã69: What is listed as a Phase III Motion Camaro, but looks for all the world like a Motion tweaked COPO (no SS badges, column shift auto) has Wide Tread F-70-14Ãs (sized, non-GT) on the front with big meats on the back. And perhaps most telling about availability in mid to late Ã69, a freshly built dune buggy with no size 15” Polyglas GTÃs on the back and sized Wide Tread F-70-14Ãs (non-GT) on the front.
To my mind, Goodyear began producing all of tires with no sizes in the print. The non-GT versions of the Wide Tread and Polyglas apparently started having the size on them sometime in early Ã69. The GT versions kept going without size. My guess is that marketing figured out that the public liked the sizes on the side and they switched the GT lines to sized configurations as well. I belive the Polyglas GT change occurred around Dec Ã69.
Fun, if somewhat arcane, thread here......
|