23-Inch Wheels Are The “Limit” - JLR Engineer

It wasn’t that long ago that a 20-inch wheel was considered massive. As cars have gotten bigger and designers have sought to ‘fill’ ever-larger wheel arches, though, 21 and 22-inch rims have become increasingly common, and you can spec a surprising amount of cars with whopping 23s.

The Range Rover Sport SV is one such vehicle. It comes with 23-inch forged wheels as standard and is available with a 23-inch carbon fibre wheel - a first for a production car. Despite being a £6,900 option, buyers have been undeterred.

“We are building the carbon wheels as fast as we can,” SV brand director Jamal Hameedi told Car Throttle at the launch of the car in Portugal, adding, “It’s been off the chart.”

The wheels look rather special, of course, but they also shed unsprung mass by a considerable 35.6kg in total. With that in mind, “carbon is the best option” for the car, JLR’s Vehicle Engineering Director Matt Becker told us. So how long until we see the company rolling out a 24-inch carbon fibre wheel, or any kind of rim of that size? Don’t count on it.

“You wouldn’t want to go much bigger than that [23 inches],” Becker said, adding, “I don’t see many 24-inch wheels. 23 seems to be about the limit”. He conceded, though, that “I’ll say that and someone will come out with a 24…”

Becker’s comments echo that of Audi’s design boss Marc Lichte from a few years ago. When the RS Q8 arrived with 23-inch wheels, he also claimed that such a size was the realistic limit for cars. Since then, he’s been proven largely right. The Chevrolet Silverado EV is the only production vehicle to be offered with 24-inch wheels from the factory, and in any case, that’s technically not a car. 

Here in Europe, wheel sizes have been kept to a more sensible(ish) limit of 23s. And thankfully, no one’s talking about a 25-inch wheel just yet…