We remember a scene in Cars where Lightning McQueen goes into Luigi’s Tire Shop for a new set of tires. The exchange goes like this:
Lightning McQueen: All right, Luigi, give me the best black-wall tires you've got.
Luigi: No, no, no! You don't know what you want. Luigi know what you want. Black-wall tires, they blend into the pavement, but these whitewall tires, they say look at me, here I am, love me!
The punchline is that it looks terrible on Lightning, terrible on racing cars, terrible on modern cars. But Luigi know what you want. The convivial Italian Fiat 500 was right, though, when he said whitewalls called attention, and it did look fabulous in its heydays slapped on automobiles in the 1920s and 1930s, like two-tone wingtips paired with a zoot suit.
And since we’re going into tires-as-shoes-for-cars territory, in 2019 Lexus does a collab with fashion designer John Elliot and Nike to come up with this
WTF??!!
Is this for real?! It’s not a whitewall tire, it’s a fuc*ing white tire. Is this supposed to be the equivalent of a car wearing Nike Air Force 1 Triple Whites?
You know, in today's world nothing can be considered ludicrous anymore. So, yes, that is exactly what it is.
Apparently, John Elliot had just dropped his take on the iconic AF1s and the Lexus guys, who were thinking up schemes to promote their urban compact crossover Lexus UX, came up with the idea of creating sneakers for the car to give it that "urban" look. They went to Elliot and designer guy produced what the car guys call the "sole of the UX." So of course it's all a marketing and branding exercise, but we are having whatever drugs they're taking (Ketamine, probably).
Right off the bat we will say IT. WILL. NOT. WORK.
For one obvious reason: it looks good when it’s not rolling, and only when it’s not rolling. Because when it does, like black-wall tires, it will blend into the pavement and it will look hideous after. You can’t sneaker-shampoo the shit out of this tire after a long drive, that’s for sure.