I've gotten 3 sets of 6ULs(two 15x9 and a 15x8 that I sold to a friend when 15x9 became available). Just on principle I wouldn't buy Tire Rack's if they were half the price.

 

This old thread is amazing. Wonder if everyone still feels the same about competition and choices for wheels a few years later.
It's like saying one tire company shouldn't make equally good tire in the same size as another company.

 

So you searched hard enough to find this thread, but couldn't find any one of a number of posts Emilio has made discussing the IP theft that Tire Rack committed?

https://www.miataturbo.net/wtb-7/8-9...47/#post989857

 

it's also like saying the TR wheel is **** compared to the 949 wheel.

 

You do need to wonder how many times someone called Tire Rack saying "Do you carry 6ULs? They're out of stock everywhere. No? Do you have any 15x8/9 around a +36? Your fitment guide thing doesn't show anything and your site doesn't let me search beyond your pre-determined 'What fits my car?' listing."

After the 5th? 10th? 1000th time, maybe they figured there was a market.

I'll buy 6ULs all day every day over the TRs, though... TRs are fugly.



Ugh... why did i get fucked by a zombie thread again?

 

Well, I'm running the Advanti's now. 6UL's weren't even remotely available when needed. It is what it is.

 

Supply/demand

 

TRs are also very heavy.

 

Has nothing to do with cutting and pasting about 1000 words of copyrighted text off of my website nearly verbatim.

I get that I created a demand and others also fill that demand now that they know it exists. I'm fine with that. Proud of it in fact.

 

 

It's weird seeing this thread come up. On my second set of 6ULs, been waiting on the third for a very long time.

I think it's the old disgust from Tirerack keeping me from going with Avanti now that I look back on things.

 

I only found this thread because I do try to use search function and read. Whether or not TR stole 949 wheel specs is sort of a big claim but like others have said, it happens all the time. Seems like biz as usual in our society. I'm not sure if there is a proactive step that Emilio could have taken, I'm sure he's tried.
It does sound like what 949 is trying to accomplish is extremely hard with hours and hours of R&D.
I'm not an engineer nor a small business owner. I'm a potential consumer.
This time I chose the Chinese product and I'm quite happy.

 

They did that? The dirty bastards.

I own 6uls. And I'm proud to have them because I know they are well engineered. And I've seen the detail pictures of the garbage TR is peddling. Zero QC is happening over there.

But I'm not surprised others have started building wheels to your fitment after your tremendous success with it. It would inevitably be noticed once the volume became substantial.

 

Where is (or was) this stolen text?

 

This is good.

A big claim which is easily backed up. 949 made this fitment available to the public in a reasonably priced, well engineered, lightweight wheel. Everyone who came after copied it. Before them, the only way was custom wheels. TR blatantly copied not only the exact wheel fitment, but as mentioned, the sizing charts. Not re-created, but directly copied.

So does rape, abuse, and extortion. Doesn't mean it's OK.

And it will continue to be as long as people continue to buy the knockoff stuff.


ALL THAT BEING SAID...

I feel like these conversations always come back to one thing: supply. While TR did blatantly copy, there are other options, like the Advanti storms, the Konigs, FFD (no X9's though), jongbloed, etc etc. I'm an FFD owner, but ONLY because 6UL's were not available. There is absolutely no question -- I would have bought 6UL's if they had been available. I don't like any other x9 options on the market.

The biggest thing 949 could have done to prevent copying, IMO, would have been to keep their wheels in stock. I KNOW Emilio says it's been beyond his control, etc. I don't know if it's actually out of his control, or that the risk required was/is too great, but I think that is what it boils down to.

 

Disagree -- Even if 949 doubled, tripled, whatever their production runs, most/all of these other wheels would have come to market. There will always be a market for cheap. TRM's are cheap. They may not win on value, but value is subjective. There are plenty of slam it bro's that believe that cost is the only thing that matters, not weight, not quality. Those in the slam it crowd that eat up the TRM may never have considered purchasing a 6UL.

 

Ben, I disagree with you for the reason Concealer listed above. Yes, they probably would have come out. But so many, so quickly? It's not the stance crowd that are buying up these 36 offset 15X9 wheels. The slammer stance crowd are buying XXRs, STRs, and hell, getting STDs for free (). The people buying TR wheels, advanti storms, konig whatevers... They're people like Ryan (oregonmon) and me and Hornetball who want a solid track wheels but 6UL's are not available. Sure, some guys will go straight to the cheap stuff but many want quality that's just not available.

I love 949's stuff, and I'll own 6UL's someday if stock coincides with money. This is in no way intended to bash Emilio -- it's a stand-up operation. This is simply an observation of the market resulting in a statement: lack of availability of the pioneering product no doubt caused other companies to rush to market to meet demand.

 

I guess the part I can't figure out...

...does anyone actually believe that simply because Emilio was first to market with a 15x8 wheel with 36 offset, that somehow that meant he had exclusive rights in perpetuity to those dimensions? Are we supporting the idea that whichever wheel manufacturer is first to produce a wheel in a given fitment should be the only wheel manufacturer that ever gets to produce a wheel in that fitment?

And no, it's not a valid answer that TR "stole" his fitment and didn't do their own research. You don't get to control how much work your competitors put into their product. If you do a lot of research and discover that the market wants blue widgets, and then you produce a blue widget and have success with it, why wouldn't I switch some of my red widget production over to blue widgets as a response?

Apple won some court cases against Samsung because the court felt (rightly or wrongly) that Samsung directly copied some design features and innovations from Apple. But nobody was ever barred from making a smartphone with the same size screen as Apple.

Explain to me why this is wrong.

 

Nobody is saying it's wrong that they produced a wheel in the same size as 949.

They ARE saying that it's wrong that they stole the intellectual property that 949 had done the R&D to figure out -- the sizing guides and such.

 

Apple won a court case based upon having a patent on the copied elements.

I doubt very much that a wheel size, determined through good engineering but otherwise probably legally "obvious" would have been patentable.

So, yeah, legally speaking 15x9 in 36 offset is fair game.

Copying website text verbatim to help sell said wheels, however, is copyright infringement and not fair game.