Last week while up in Wolverhampton on business I sneaked out of work for the afternoon to visit the Compomotive alloy wheel factory which is just down the road, as I know a guy who works there.
I thought about all Tiff's endeavours on here with regards to sourcing new parts so I asked him about the feasibility of doing a batch of wheels in X1/9 fitment. (there are plenty of 13" wheels they do, see
www.comp.co.uk/wheels/
to see their range of designs, there are loads available in 13" diameter).
He would be willing to do a new run of wheels from their existing designs but would need a minimum order of about 60 wheels (which makes 15 sets). Then this would cost £60 per wheel all inclusive of VAT, delivery etc which is pretty cheap!
They even are prepared to design new tooling from scratch to make custom wheels to your exact design/specification - they already make a lot of replica wheels
www.comp.co.uk/wheels/replica.asp
(just think, the thought of making brand new Cromodora Daytona or CD 30 replicas!) BUT to do this it costs about £5,000 to get the moulds made up first and all the tooling in order so for an order of 15 sets of wheels it would add £330 to the price but for a much larger order that figure would obviously drop drastically.
Not really in the market for a set of wheels myself but hell if the interest is there, Im happy to order a set for myself and act as the 'go-between' to get the deal going... There ARE companies out there willing to deal with you its just a shame there are so few X1/9's out there so our cumulative buying clout when dealing with big comapnies is severely limited.. if we were classic Mini owners for example it would not be a problem whatsoever!
