WHEELS: Manufacturer of Festiva OEM Steel Wheels

[Rich Norman]

Which company manufactured the steel wheels on the 1988-93 Festiva in North America ?

[bravekozak]

OEM secrecy

You will be hard pressed to discover who the OEM supplier of any part.
They are contractually obligated to secrecy.
For instance, I worked for Mytox Manufacturing in Woodbridge, Ontario.
They made all the SUV running boards for Blazers, Expeditions, Suburbans, etc.
The company that made the plastic covers just busted last week.
Progressive Molded Products closed 11 factories and 2000 jobs were lost. The tooling is only used for about 10 years after end of production. All tooling is owned by the manufacturer. They give permission to destroy it at the end of the service program. The tooling must be destroyed, unless the OEM supplier wants to continue to store the tooling and continue to make service parts. Usually not worth storage space or the bother.

[jglutz]

^^I would beg to differ a little bit....Most auto big guys force the tooling cost to be wrapped into the piece cost....thus creating competition amongst vendors. They do retain exclusive rights to the use of the tooling....parts can only be made with the big guys permission...and after the run of the model....the big guys handle tooling on a case by case bases. I never heard of any secrecy agreements other than maybe those process related.

Who made the original steelies...most likely someone close to the main assembly plant

[CharlieZ]

Would it even be likely that the wheels were made in the U.S. Lots of foreign autos & trucks came into the ports with a thing or two that needed to be installed here to meet some kind of tax regulations. I don't know of any that got shipped without wheels.

[bravekozak]

Not even the dealers are supposed to know who made the parts. That is why dealer direct shipments are very rare. On a production item, they are usually shipped to the factory, and then put inside the vehicle to await dealer installation. All other parts go to the parts warehouses across the country. I am certain someone at a major Ford service Parts warehouse might be convinced to tell you who made them.
Good luck.

[FB71]

huh, because most manufacturers freely disclose their supplier info to public sources like Automotive News on a regular basis. Items like steel wheels are usually put up for bid every year, so the supplier could theoretically change every year, but the part would remain nearly the same. JG Lutz has it pretty much nailed.

[Axlander9289]

Last time I looked close at a Festiva rim, it had "Selbo" stamped on it. I'd say that's the supplier, whatever Selbo is.