THREE SPOKE WHEELS

01 Saab 900 Aero Turbo

Saab had a rich seam of form in three spoke wheels, with various models right up to the early Noughties 9-5 saloon being available with handsome triple-spoke rims. Our favourite are the thickset, almost monobloc-looking wheels fitted to the 900 Aero Turbo from the late Eighties.

02 Dodge Viper

Well if you’re building a car that does without a roof, exterior doorhandles, driver aids or airbags, then its only right and proper you do away with a wheel spoke or two. The Viper’s swept three-spokes with imitation centre lock lug nuts are peak early Nineties chic.

03 Vauxhall Nova SR

A car from a more innocent time. Wait, innocent is the wrong word when you’re talking about a joyrider classic. The Nova is as quintessentially late Eighties as a red-braced stockbroker in a whaletail 911. And don’t those tri-point wheels suit the angular looks to a tee?

04 Range Rover Classic

Why has the original Range Rover design endured? Because it’s so unpretentious. The body wasn’t even styled: they simply signed it off with the unadorned aluminium panelwork the development team had been using on the test mules.

05 Brabus Monoblock II

Is there a Nineties-era Mercedes that doesn’t suit a Brabus Monoblock II? Arguably not, since the German tuners made merry with fitting them across S-, E- and SL-Classes. And they’ve now revived the design for a newly tuned SL, giving the three-pointed star a three-pointed rim.

06 Ford Ka

Sometimes, something’s so bizarrely ugly, it comes full circle (pun not remotely intended) and becomes wonderful. And that’s the case for the three-spoke alloy wheels fitted to the top of the range Ford Ka 3 in the late Nineties. You just don’t see imagination like this any more.

07 Koenigsegg Regera

Supercars and three-spoke wheels don’t tend to mix, but trust Koenigsegg to buck the trend. Its carbon split tri-spoke for the Regera is among the lightest wheels fitted to any supercar and CvK himself claims the design simply wouldn’t be possible with conventional metal alloy wheels.

08 Mazda RX-7 Rotor wheels

Mazda managed to combine the pursuit of three-spoke wheel perfection with a nod to what actually powered the car sat on top of them. That rounded triangle motif in the late Eighties RX-7 wheel was actually a nod to the shape of the rotary cylinder as found in the Wankel engine.

09 Suzuki Vitara

These days the Suzuki Vitara is a nice-but-anonymous village green runabout permanently tuned to Classic FM. In the Nineties however, before it grew up, it was a wacky tearaway with an exposed spare wheel, lairy graphics and wheels with too few spokes.