Is it just me or do these cars look way better on smaller wheels?

If you can't see the tops of the tires, it helps.

Knurled wrote: A lot of the reason for huge wheels on race cars, besides larger brakes, are rules that say no part of the body may touch the ground if a tire is deflated. So, thinner tires means you can make the car lower. My personal opinion is that a car needs wheels from the era in which it was designed. To wit, anything larger than 14" on a 240Z or an RX-7 looks stupid, while anything smaller than 17" on, say, a newer Tiburon also looks pretty lame. I still can't put my finger on what, exactly, is different about the styling changes. But, I did have 17" wheels on my RX-7 for about an hour before I took them back off. They just looked ridiculous.

I have to disagree, first as you stated tires are a factor, no 14" tires are up to my car's performance but these 16s do it justice IMHO

I hate the trend of putting huge wheels on cars, from the factory, even. Makes them look like giant Matchbox toys. Modern cars almost always look better with smaller wheels than they come with.

Gearheadotaku wrote: I think the key is to fill the wheelwell.

I think it's more complicated than that. 17" wheels "filled the wheelwells" on my RX-7 but they looked like total ass.

I think there is a Golden Ratio kind of thing going on there, relative to the center of the wheel to the rocker panel and something else - beltline maybe. Modern cars set the wheels in further past the rocker panels. Do that in an older car and the top of the wheel disappears in the fender like the Plywood Jetta.

For those keeping score at home, this is bad.

semi-on topic, i just ordered some 14" ATS cups for my miata.

should look like this...

Damn those look fantastic.

For my Daewoo I'm probably going to just consign myself to a life full of crappy street tires on 15s and then get another set of 15s for race tires. I could go bigger, but I think it would look stupid and I don't particularly want the extra unsprung weight.

Here's my car on 15s

Another Nubira on 18s.

With the full race paint job and race slicks yeah it looks better. On your plain paint DD with street tires it doesn't.