Don’t you just hate it when you spend nearly $1,000 on chrome Shelby Torq wheels for your ’67 Mustang only to have your wife tell you that the black wheels would have looked way cooler? Tirerack.com has introduced a feature that lets consumers not only see on screen how different wheels would look on their cars but also to create PDF images they can print out or e-mail to their favorite coolness consultant.
The on-screen viewing feature has been available for several years, but Matt Edmonds, vice president at The Tire Rack, says customers were asking for a better way to print the options they were looking at.
“With this feature someone can print it out and keep it and look at it,” Edmonds says. “Sometimes they just want to put it on their refrigerator.”
“Or show it to their wife or buddies,” chimes in Tim Joines, director of Internet business.
Edmonds says customers previously could print out a view of their car with new wheels, but the print-outs were not very good. He says the company’s in-house software developers used a free PDF-printing program as a starting point and customized it so that it works with the company’s image database of vehicles and accessories.
Joines says the company can present on its web site more than 15,000 combinations of vehicle makes, models and years. He says staff photographers take pictures of vehicles in the company’s own studio. The company then adds in the colors the vehicle comes in so that customers can see wheels and other accessories as the items would look on their own car. The Tire Rack, which also sells through a catalog, stocks 31 brands of wheels as well as such other items as tires, shock absorbers and brakes.
The Tire Rack has been in business since 1979 and has had an e-commerce site since 1998. The company cites data from the Specialty Equipment Manufacturing Association showing that consumers spend $8.4 billion each year adding equipment to their cars and trucks.
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