Goodyear tires

[tom406]

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......

[bkhpah]

The tires I have been talking about are from the Chevrolet line only...BKH

[tom406]

Re-reading the original post, and confining our discussion to Chevrolet examples, I think it is safe to make some assumptions. Kelsey appears to be using the Dec '69 no-size/size cutoff for all Polyglas tires, GT or non. The fact that the '70 LS6 prototype was wearing sized Polyglas F-70-14 in the Oct '69 issue of CARS shows that the sized tires were available before this. My faith in the Dec '69 date is for Polyglas GT tires, the F-60-15 size in particular. There is ample evidence that the 14" Polyglas versions had the sizes on them earlier than December. But as BKH alludes, were 14" Polyglas tires even available as OEM on the '69 Chevrolets? Noone has yet offered an example of an original '69 Camaro or Chevelle with F-70-14 Polyglas tires, just the Wide Treads. If you have an untouched low mileage car, particularly a late '69 production car, please take a minute to check the spare and report your findings!

[JoeC]

Kelsey Tire may be correct that the Polyglas tire was not used by Chevy until 12/69. I remember reading something about Chevy Engineering being slow to approve the polyglas tires for high speed applications. Chevy stuck with the old design nylon cord Wide Thread GT and Speedway tires on the hi performance cars and Corvette until the Polyglas tires had been real-would tested by the other manufactures.

[Rowdy Rat]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JoeC: I remember reading something about Chevy Engineering being slow to approve the polyglas tires for high speed applications. Chevy stuck with the old design nylon cord Wide Thread GT and Speedway tires on the hi performance cars and Corvette until the Polyglas tires had been real-world tested by the other manufactures. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Joe is absolutely correct on this aspect. In fact, Corvettes never used fiberglass belted tires for this very reason. Duntov was quoted as saying that the Corvette required a tire capable of 140 mph speeds and the nylon belted tires were the only ones that met his criteria. Nylon belted tires were used in Corvette applications until they were replaced by radial tires for the 1973 model year.

Regards,

Stan Falenski

[Keith Tedford]

From what I can recall, '69 SS Chevelles didn't get Goodyear Polyglas tires. Z/28s got the Goodyear Wide Tread GT tires which were entirely different and totally useless in the traction department. Personal experience.
All I can remember '69 SS Chevelles with was Uniroyal and Firestone but others may have been used.

[tom406]

It's not a Chevy, but we just got in a '69 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler, Dan Gurney edition, with original everything, including the spare. It's a no-size on the sidewall Polyglas, F70-14. The car was built 5/69. Again, not Chevy specific, but it helps give an idea of the timeframe of size vs. no-size production by Goodyear in '69.