Whatever happened to hubcaps? Or at least, whatever happened to hubcaps in modern mainstream motoring? For classic car enthusiasts the issue of hubcaps is pretty damn critical, but for the majority of car owners it’s simply disappeared off the radar.

You know what I mean: If you’ve lost a hubcap from your Vandan Plas 1100 you’re in trouble. You can’t pop down to the dealers and buy one. They can be found, but you’re going to have to hunt.

Similarly, do ne’er-do-wells still steal hubcaps? Or is it just stereos and mobile phones left in glove compartments? There was quite a lively trade in stolen hubcaps at one time; I once bought a set of Zodiac hubcaps in a low pub in Wythenshawe as a treat for my Corsair. I can’t remember how much I paid but I bet it wasn’t more than a pound or so, and no, I didn’t ask where they’d come from. I bet Watney’s Red Barrel was being drunk there in huge quantities then too.

Also, you used to see hubcaps on roadside verges all the time, and folk used to pick them up and press them into use as … er, ashtrays and fruit bowls. If you actually heard the ominous clatter of a hubcap dropping off a wheel, by the time you had turned round and gone back for it, it had inevitably either disappeared – like a golf ball into the rough – or been run over by six cars, two lorries and a Post Office van. They’ve largely disappeared from the landscape nowadays; we get one and a half litre pop bottles and black bin bags instead.

 

Those Zodiac hubcaps were classics in my book; really lovely, unlike the rather plain ones which Vauxhall, for example, always used on their cars. Equally important of course were the halo-shaped trims that you had to hold in place with one hand while you offered up the hubcap with the other. They usually slipped off again before you could thump the hubcap – though my dad used to hold the trims on his Anglia Deluxe in place with a couple of large dollops of axle grease. Messy but effective.