Chrysler’s stylish Cast Aluminum Center Road Wheels for 1969 were all recalled by the factory, but somehow a surprising number of them are still around.
When the National Highway Traffic Safety Act was signed into law, it created the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), with the authority, among other things, to oversee and direct vehicle safety recalls. And since then, recalls have become totally commonplace. If you’ve owned a car, you’ve almost certainly participated in the process. But in fact, recalls are as old as the auto industry. Take for example the Chrysler wheel recall of 1969.
1969 Dodge brochure
In the muscle car era, distinctive wheels were an essential part of the scene, and on Dodge and Plymouth cars for 1969, one of the multiple wheel choices available was the Cast Aluminum Center Road Wheel. Manufactured for Chrysler by Kelsey-Hayes, these 15×6-in wheels (sales code W23) featured a sand-cast aluminum center section riveted to a steel rim, with five chrome lug nuts and a snap-on, bright-metal trim ring to conceal the black steel rim. Unlike most aluminum wheels, these used a conventional-style lug nut with a conical seat rather than a sleeved and shouldered mag-type nut and a flat washer.
1969 Plymouth Fury Brochure
So far, so good, but shortly before the cars officially went on sale early in September of 1968, Chrysler discovered a problem. It seems the lug nuts were working loose, due in part, some say, to an incorrect heat-treating process on the cast aluminum centers. A bulletin (see below) was immediately sent out to all the dealers, directing them to remove the Kelsey-Hayes wheels and replace them with one of the multiple alternatives available—before the cars were delivered.
And that would be the end of it, one would think. The Cast Aluminum Center Road Wheels should have been erased from history. But somehow, there are a surprising number of these wheels still in circulation. It seems that many were not sent back to the manufacturer or destroyed, but set aside by dealer personnel. They were too pretty to let go. And so at most any Chrysler muscle car meet you are liable to see a ’69 Dodge or Plymouth sporting the recalled Kelsey-Hayes wheels. (They were also reproduced for a time, with the replicas using mag-style nuts.) The recall wheels are a status symbol among Mopar muscle car enthusiasts today, with original sets selling for thousands of dollars.
The K-H wheel recall was ethical behavior by honorable Chrysler engineers and their suppliers, NHTSA was not involved at all as far as I know. Nowadays the Chrysler safety office would fight tooth and nail to keep defective K-H wheels on the road, arguing the facts, data and the law ultimately convincing the interns and lawyers that inherited NHTSA decades ago that more crashes, injuries and wheels flying thru windshields makes everyone safer…
What’s your take on a minor calamity that happened around that time I read in FORTUNE magazine…the story is that some 200 Chrysler New Yorkers went down the assembly line without the punch card for equipment. All of them were built without power equipment, automatic transmissons, sound systems, and the like.
The K-H recall wheels were supposedly Dodge and Plymouth only, but Ma’ Mopar at the time would usually build whatever you wanted if you had the money and the parts were somewhere in the plant. Any friendly dealership service department would also oblige.
As 1969 was the last year for a clutch pedal in the full-size C-body, the Fortune article could be 200 three-on-the-tree special order New Yorker- based professional cars, maybe for NHTSA…
Some sets were obviously people that never showed up to have the recall replacement performed because they liked the wheels that they bought, but to the extent that some sets may not have been returned to Chrysler, the folks that ratholed those wheels at the dealerships cost their bosses a ton of money. Back in 1969, the manufacturers were very strict about the requirement that every part replaced under warranty be returned to them, and claims were not paid until those parts were received.