Rota wheels known for making some great wheels at a solid price, announced a new semi-forging technology for its most popular wheels.
Love them or hate them, Rota Wheels are known for offering popular designs at a great value. According to Rota Wheels during an announcement for the Manila International Auto Show earlier yesterday (Apr. 6,2018) they’re now offering semi-forged wheels. For the longest time, Rota only made gravity cast alloy wheels, one of the cheapest and oldest ways to make an alloy wheel. But now, with what Rota is calling their flow form technology, they are able to make a semi-forged wheel that’s almost as good as a forged wheel at a fraction of the cost. Check out their video announcement below.
Whereas fully forged wheels are literally forged between two forging dies under extreme amounts of pressure, semi-forged wheels take a slightly cheaper approach. First, an initial shape of the wheel is cast by low pressure. Then, a special machine spins, stretches, heats and shapes the rim into its final width and shape. This mix of heat, pressure, and spinning makes a rim with almost the same strength of a forged wheel but without the high cost.
In layman’s terms, you can now get a lighter wheel from Rota that you can feel confident putting under extreme stresses, like in Motorsports.
The running joke was that real car enthusiasts didn’t run Rotas because they would break. While grossly untrue, fans of Rota did want a wheel that’s not only lighter but slightly stronger than their current offerings. Now they have it.
According to Rota, these new wheels will be 20-30 percent more expensive than their cast version but will coincidentally be 20-30 percent lighter (and obviously stronger and durable) than their cast alternative.
Take their popular Rota Grid (which will be offered as semi-forged) in their 17-inch size. Their 17×7.5 Rota Grids weigh in at about 18.5 pounds and cost about $160 per wheel. A semi-forged Rota Grid would weigh slightly under 14 pounds, which is pretty awesome for its size but would cost slightly more at around $200 per wheel. In Motorsports in a game of hundredths of a second, a lighter wheel would pay dividends over the long run. For the average motorist, you’d probably feel your car react better around corners.
Hate if you must but Rota now has semi-forged wheels. When they drop official pricing, you’ll be hard-pressed not to take a second look the next time you need a set of wheels.
Customers in the Philippines and near South East Asian markets should see their semi-forged offerings sooner rather than later. Customers in the United States will probably have to wait slightly longer before they can start ordering them or they start showing up on official distributors websites.
