You may recall a few weeks ago I wrote about how a friend of mine hunted down the ratty Suzuki Esteem used in the popular television show Better Call Saul; the Esteem was a wonderfully-cast car, an incredibly tattered and sad machine that echoed the desperate situation of the show’s protagonist perfectly. My friend, Tory, who bought the car for an objectively absurd-sounding $4,000, is the sort of person who, once he gets a car, he wants whatever he’s doing with that car to be just right. In the case of the Esteem, “just right” means a car that is extremely shitty, a carefully-curated amalgam of just the right sort of automotive neglect, despair, and exhaustion. It also means that Tory now finds himself in the ridiculous situation of trying to source just the right kind of crappy, bargain-bin-at-Pep Boys plastic wheel covers, and for that, he needs our help. So let’s see what we can do.
What I like about this particular automotive quest is that it feels like the sort of hunt any automotive restorer might be on to find some sort of rare, sought-after part, like, say, some rare grille bezel from a 1937 Delahaye or something, except this is the sort of part that has negative value, and is most often seen propped up against the post of a yield sign on a traffic island near where it was flung off the right rear wheel of a speeding Altima.
Okay, let’s take a look at the wheel cover in question here, in a screenshot from Better Call Saul:
See those? You’ve probably seen wheel covers like those a billion times, and, ideally, never gave them more than a moment’s thought. They’re directional, and always seem to be going the wrong way, and the bolts on the face of them are fake little plastic bas-relief nubs. They’re cheap crap.
You’d think he’d be able to find them anywhere, and he almost can, but the problem is that, for Tory, almost isn’t good enough. He’s found ones that are pretty close, but after scouring eBay and other sites, he has yet to come up with the exact match he demands.
So, this is where all you fantastic automotive geeks come in; if there is any community of gearheads on the internet with a chance in hell of identifying a specific kind of crappy aftermarket plastic wheel cover probably from the early-ish 2000s, it’s got to be this one, right? It’s got to be the Autopian community, the champions of details far too mundane for the normal mind to care about, and for whom crappiness is a virtue!
So, can we help Tory restore this car to its original – I can’t really say glory here, can I – um, state? And, if we can identify these wheel covers, I think the good news is he doesn’t even need a full set of four to make the car right, so that helps.
I know this may sound absurd, but look, the man got this shitbox running again and everything:
View this post on Instagram
Clearly, this project means a lot to him, and who are we to yuck anyone’s yum, right? So any investigative help or insights would be much appreciated. Perhaps one of you has a couple of these rolling around in your garage, perhaps acting as a bowl to hold random bolts and nuts and bits of wire? Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky!
A massive thank you for everyone’s detective skills here! As luck would have it, I was contacted by Andrew L on Instagram after his brother read this article here on The Autopian. He had exactly one of these in stock in his store where he specializes in, you guessed it, hubcaps. For those wondering, it’s made in Taiwan, and this specific wheel cover is model KH-320. It ships out on Monday and thanks to Andrew and his brother, I can now use my time for more constructive things rather than daily eBay searches. Again, thanks to the community here for an automotive mystery solved!
Don’t forget to hold the cap in place with zip ties. They always magically appear on my car each time it gets serviced.
Early ’00s walmart specials. Best of luck as they were absolute crap when new so I don’t imagine there are may still extant.
Huh, I thought these were simply a Pep Boys special. But noooo! Even Google Lens search has no idea and comes up with nada.
Who knew having your beater look so *authentically* shitty was such hard work!
Google Lens is what got me there eventually, took a fair effort, I’ve got half a dozen images of hubcaps in my phone gallery now and my brain probably won’t forget the words “13 inch plastic chrome hubcap wheel cover 4 stud” anytime soon.
https://amexautoparts.com/catalogue/wheel-cover-size-13_14468/
Took me a long time to even find a pic of them with 4 lugs. No promises on attainability, but there they are!
Only 2400 Kenyan Shillings? What a deal!
There we go. Overnight from Nairobi. Job done.
Amazing! I need to make some friends in Kenya! I suppose it’s worth a shot to see if they’d be willing to ship a set to good old Albuquerque!
Good luck! Hope you can get what you’re looking for~
I am 100% sure I’ve seen these hanging somewhere in the last 15 years. Either Ollie’s, an off-brand truck stop, or a flea market. I remember looking at the twisty, bulged spokes and thinking that they looked stupid cheap and ugly.
I have a feeling that they were cheap clones of brand-name hubcaps. Maybe branded Car and Driver?
these? cultus wheels
https://images.app.goo.gl/XzpA76yfW5v3xZet7
Doing a image search I stumbled upon these two things that caught my eye. I found an ad with a Daewoo Lanos ad where you can see that it has very similar hubcaps:https://www.grays.com/lot/0001-10314431/motor-vehiclesmotor-cycles/1998-daewoo-lanos-se-automatic-hatchback#&gid=1&pid=9
Also, I found this ad for these hubcaps on amazon but they are not the ones: Tuningpros WC1P-15-8083-S – Pack of 1 Hubcap (1 Piece) – 15-Inches Style Snap-On (Pop-On) Type Metallic Silver Wheel Covers Hub-caps https://a.co/d/4bwBjJe
So close… the ST88005 from Shaft Enterprise Co., Ltd. looks to be nearly the same, except it appears to have five fake lugs instead of four:
https://www.shaft.com.tw/p01_09_b.htm
I remember these craptastic type of wheel covers well. I used a set to dress up a ’91 Toyota Celica I had fixed up, and those were surprisingly almost identical to the factory ones. I also managed to find a set that was at least somewhat close to what the rims had originally looked like on a $900 Buick Park Ave I had scored via Craigslist. They had a stupid thin metal ring reinforcing plastic tabs that felt like they would break upon installation. I’m pretty sure the manufacturer’s intent was for one-use only.
Oooh, those are REALLY close! I feel like I could live with them being 5 lug. Good work!
Hopefully the 5 lug is an image of the 15, and the 13 is 4 lug. But these look pretty spot on.
Found them: https://www.shaft.com.tw/p01_09_b.htm Model ST88005. Available in 13″ or 14″. I’d wager they come in 4-lug as well from this fine establishment in Taiwan.
If he just needs one (1): https://www.junkmail.co.za/car-spares-and-parts/wheels-rims-and-tyres/kwazulu-natal/hillcrest/wheelcap-14-inch/e1023bf98fee4598a1658d4f1ec9ef00
Wal-Mart: https://www.walmart.com/ip/TuningPros-WSC-852S14-Set-of-4-Metallic-Silver-Hubcaps-14-Hub-Caps-Wheel-Skin-Cover-14-inches-4-Pcs-Set/363883152 (can’t tell if he wants chrome or not)
Needs to be 4 lug. but close
Largely useless-for-the-actual-goal trivia, but hey, where are we, right?
The covers in the picture right above “Close, but not close enough” are for GM 15″ steelies from the ’00s!
Specifically the 1995-1999 Chevrolet Cavalier coupe before they dropped them entirely and only left the five spoke “Starfy” hubcaps until the Cavalier’s demise in 2004.
OMG you’re right – ’90s!
(They were an option on my Beretta too)
Even more specifically, they’re clearly styled after ’95- Cavalier hubcaps, but the originals had five ‘lugs’ to match the five real lugs underneath.
ugh, flashbacks, ptsd… I swear my Dad bought an identical utterly hideous set for a 96 sentra circa 2000 from walmart in the clearance section
My buddy put some on his ’85 prelude about the same time.
Walmart specials baby.
The only thing I remember about wheel covers was to throw them out. I’m pretty sure I saw those back in the day or at least close matches, not just installed, but in boxes on a shelf. Maybe AutoZone? I guess that’s no help.
Wow–they didn’t even bother to fake up five lugs on the wheel cover, like the Walmart specials which hide the four-bolt shame of our Fit’s winter steelies.
Hey, don’t make fun of mine. They cost me $20 hard earned dollars 🙂
Better than the ones that led to a panicked call from my friend asking why the lug nuts wouldn’t come off his GF’s Nissan 240SX. Visions of stripped studs and rounded-off nuts coursed through my head before I thought to ask if he’d taken off the hubcaps first.
“What hubcaps?”
I had a similar experience. Coworker called in late, said he had a flat tire. Was all sorts of pissed off because he ended up having to call AAA to do it for him, and his GF was likely henpecking him the whole time as she was known to do.
At lunch I passed his car and saw one of the wheels had three of the little fake lug nuts broken off, and all the pieces came together in my head.