Black Wheels

We talked about why tires are black. Now we'll discuss black wheels:

It seems to me that black wheels on cars are the current popular style. I see them a lot on newer vehicles and in car ads. I drove by a car dealership the other day and there were five or six vehicles on their lot all in a row and all with black wheels. Maybe the car manufactures are trying to push them on us. I don't know.

In fact, my new car (well, it's over a year old now) came with black wheels:

At first I was thinking "I could live with them" even though I prefer more... blingy wheels. Then I lived with them. They got dirty if you looked at them wrong and they were hard to clean. And, as I said, I just didn't like the look of them. 

So when it was time to take off my winter tires, I left them on the black wheels and installed a set of BBS wheels which are much more pretty and don't get dirty as easily and are easier to clean.

I like the look so much more than the black wheels. I kept the winter tires on the black wheels to use when keeping a car clean is less important.

I don't know why black wheels are so popular, at least with automakers. I remembered being baffled by the large wheel phenomenon (which, to an extent, is still happening), too. 

What do you think of black wheels? Do you care? Or are they just mostly ugly? Let me know in the comments below.