XR7-G Rader Wheel History

Here is one of the earliest documents pertaining to what was to become the XR7-G.

Shelby American (Los Angeles) was involved as early as the Spring of 1967 with developing for Mercury a luxury/performance Cougar called the XR-7S (“S” for Shelby more than likely).

Hertz was aware of this and requested that 200 be built for them to rent. You can see that Hertz wanted a real wire wheel and Shelby American’s concern about whether or not that was possible. The solution/compromise ultimately being the Rader Spoked Wheel.

Of historical note - In October 1966 Ford took control over ordering and engineering at Shelby American. Six months later in May 1967 Ford decided to terminate the Shelby Program. By the time the XR-7S would have entered production Shelby American was no more, being split up into three separate entities; The Shelby Racing Company, The Shelby Parts Company and Shelby Automotive Company, Inc., which produced and marketed the production cars and was basically a division of Ford. Shelby production was moved to A.O. Smith (Smith Plastics) located in Michigan closer to Ford and the XR-7S became the XR7-G.

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Here is a memo where Smith expressed it’s concerns about using the Rader wheels to Shelby.

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That is some awesome history - thanks for securing the history AND sharing !!

Ditto for me - very interesting!

I run into Chris Engemann once in awhile who is local and worked at A.O Smith. He said the line works were complaining about installing the wheels as they didn’t fit the studs. They were instructed by management to use a rubber mallet to install the wheels which stressed the wheel studs, but they did it anyways as they were instructed. I have some Shelby wheel folders I’ll have to dig out and post.

^^^ That would be fantastic Brian! Please post what you have.

  • Phillip

Getting back to Rader wheel quality - back at the start of Wheel Corp. of America, company founder, mechanical engineer and wheel designer Dick Rader Jr. (his father, Dick Rader senior was also heavily involved with the company in promotion and sales) set up a meeting with engineers at wheel manufacturer Kelsey-Hayes to have their wheels undergo testing, including an impact test where 2000 lbs was dropped on the wheel from a height as great as 24 inches.

Also performed was a rotating fatigue test where a wheel was spun at a load of 2,036 lb. per ft. A rod was bolted to the wheel center and an overload of 50 percent was exerted and the wheel was spun as many revolutions as it could until failure.

These tests were the OEM standard at the time and the Rader wheel exceeded all requirements.

Fast forward to '65-'66, the Raders entered into another ill fated partnership with the owner of the company that supplied their chrome plating.

Almost immediately the Raders realized they had major disagreements over how Trans-American Products should be run and in 1966 sold their shares to him.

Quality control issues soon set in and the loss of sales resulted in Trans-American Products going bankrupt and closing shop in 1974.

  • Phillip

Probably the most well known example of Barris using the spoked Rader wheel is on one of the Mustangs he customized for Sonny & Cher.

He used Raders on both Mustangs, but used the XR7-G style Rader on Cher’s.

These Mustangs both still exist and where sold at auction not too long ago, however the Cher Mustang no longer sports it’s spoked Raders.

What’s cool about the Sonny & Cher Mustangs is that AMT made a 1/25 model kit that includes the Rader spoked wheels.

So if you ever want to kit bash a XR7-G model you can grab the wheels from one of these kits.

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I saw those two Mustangs and one that Barris did for Frank Sinatra (edit - apparently the Frank Sinatra Mustang got restored: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/the-unique-1965-ford-mustang-zebra-is-a-furry-movie-car-with-a-cocktail-cabinet-192245.html) about 25 years ago at Mustangs Plus in Paramount City, California. At the time the owner of Mustangs Plus owned a large collection of Mustangs, including those. They were in pretty sad condition being unrestored and not being driven for many years. It was obvious that Barris did a quicky job on them. Hopefully they have been restored and are looking good again.

LOL - George Barris’ work is polarizing I guess you could say. I think it was his brother Sam that was the genius - he left the business sometime in the '50s.

Barris had some terrific people working for him at times, like Dean Jeffries.

But yeah, I think a lot of what he did was under super tight deadlines and was meant to look good (or at least get attention) on camera.

  • Phillip

Here is a Barris customized AMX with the spoke Raders.

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One of the wildest customs to sport spoked Raders (one of the wildest custom cars of all-time really), was the “Roach Coach”.

By this time (1978) custom cars had gotten so wild that quite a few of them were pretty much undriveable and were more like works of art.

Designed by one of my favorite artists of all time Ed “Newt” Newton (look him up sometime) for Stan Peterson, owner of Roach Studios (which is still around in some sort of incarnation I think).

Roach Studios made monster/hot rod t-shirts in the style of Ed Roth, who Newt had worked for previously. I’ll post one of my favorite Roach t-shirt ads next.

Anyway, the Raders on this thing are just outrageous!

The Roach Coach is still around and currently in the collection at Galpin Ford’s speed shop and customizing arm GAS (Galpin Auto Sports).

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A provocative ad for Roach that appeared in car magazines in the '70s.

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Here is a quality scan of one of my most prized pieces of XR7-G memorabilia. The Hertz counter card for their Sports Car Club rental offerings in 1968. If you walked into a Hertz office that year a stack of these would have been on display.

I think it is the only Hertz marketing material that has a photo of a G - although this car is actually a prototype.

My father-In-Law was a Hertz Sales Manager all during the Shelby years and had a bunch of Sports Car Club items when I started dating his soon-to-be-my-wife daughter in 1980. Jackets, tote bags, garment bags, lighters, pens, pencils, playing cards - all kinds of stuff. I sold all of it except for this counter card and a couple of jackets.

Oh, and all Hertz XR7-Gs came with the Rader wheels.



Three ring binder and paper folder. I thought the paper folder had some literature in it, but I guess not it’s empty.

Very cool tho - thanks for posting.

Different address than in the catalog from '75. Shelby had business’s popping up and disappearing all over the place.

  • Phillip

1975 was pretty much the last gasp for Shelby American. They allied themselves with JC Penney and Vic Hubbard Marine and Honest Charlys to sell stuff like wheels and intake manifolds. I think Honest Charlys may still exist in some form. JC Penney closed their automotive department long ago. They may have some stores still open but they are on the way out too. I don’t see any Vic Hubbard ads any more.

On a whim I checked eBay and I’ll be darned if there isn’t a set of Shelby Diamondback rims for sale right now.

On inspecting the photos it appears the spokes are more dimensional on the Shelby wheel.

And these aren’t Ford bold pattern also notice the 18 spokes vs the Rader’s 16.

Screen grab for when the auction goes away.