Car Tire Colors

Car tires were initially off white, due to the natural color of the rubber used. Pure vulcanized rubber is soft and wears out very quickly and tends to heat up and deform under load. Tire makers mixed zinc oxide in with the rubber that added temperature stability and hardness, and which made the tires bright white in color.

As the benefits of adding carbon black to the compound became known, that additive was used just on the tread portion, while the side of the tire remained the natural color, the original whitewall tires. Adding carbon black made the tires darker, and they lasted four to five times longer.

Binney & Smith began selling their carbon black chemicals to Goodrich Tire Company (now Michelin). Binney & Smith would later switch to making school products, and, eventually, re-name their company after their most popular product, Crayola Crayons.

There are a few tire manufacturers that make specialty color tires, mostly for car shows, and during 1961, Goodyear Tires introduced an experimental tire that was illuminated from the inside. Small incandescent bulbs were mounted inside the tire through holes inside the rim and the tire was made from a single piece of synthetic rubber. The synthetic rubber was created much thinner than a regular tire to allow for the light to penetrate the rubber. Due to the strict laws regarding the manufacturing of street-legal tires and the obvious hazard of having fragile glass inside them, Goodyear’s illuminated tires never actually saw mass production.