Thanks to a left over winter promotional offer, I just picked up some 16" steel rims to go inside the 205/55R16 BFG Traction T/A tires I had lying around.

Why steel rims, you ask? Well, the car never had the stock alloys when I bought it off some used dealer's lot, and was running around on jobber 15s with severely worn snow tires. Black steelies just have this no-nonsense look to me, so I hunted around for them for a while. The best price I could find was $82/rim, which was frustrating, since money is always tight (yay for babies!).

I was swapping summer tires onto an '06 Vibe, and looked at the bolt pattern and thought "Hmm, that looks familiar!" When I was done, I popped on the Tire Rack site and checked the detailed stats on available wheels for Vibes, and they do indeed share the 5x100 bolt pattern.

So I asked the parts guy if he could price me some Vibe 16" steelies, and they came to $60 each. I got them, mounted and balanced the tires, and went to put them on, when "thunk." "Thunk thunk thunk." Dammit. The centre hole is a smaller diameter than the hub centre.

Moral of the story is: If you want to use Vibe or Matrix rims, you'll have to grind out the centre hole to make them fit, but it's not hard to do. Just make sure you go around in smooth circles.

I'll try to post pics sometime. You almost don't notice that they're the stock GT/Z24 tire size.