When BBS decided to show the world its first wheel built for trucks and SUVs, it did not do the unveiling itself. It handed the moment to two men from Charlotte.
The founders of WheelPrice — the Charlotte-based online marketplace for enthusiast car wheels — previewed the new BBS truck and SUV wheel for the audience at a recent NASCAR Sundays event. For BBS, a German company that has been building performance wheels since 1970, it is a first: in more than five decades of supplying wheels to Formula 1, Le Mans, IMSA, and NASCAR, the company has never made a wheel designed for trucks and SUVs. That it chose a three-year-old Charlotte startup to put the wheel in front of an audience says something about where WheelPrice now sits in the wheel business.
What was shown
The preview was a first look, not a product launch. BBS has not released specifications — sizes, fitments, finishes, pricing, or availability — for the new truck and SUV wheel, and none were presented at the event. What the NASCAR Sundays audience saw was the wheel itself and the fact of it: that BBS, after more than five decades, is moving into a segment it has never served.
The expansion is a notable one for the brand. BBS built its name on three-piece racing wheels and forged road wheels for sports cars — the iconic "RS" design, launched in 1983, is still a fixture in the enthusiast wheel world. Trucks and SUVs are a different market, and a far larger one. For a company whose motto is "Technology Through Motorsports," it is a move toward the vehicles most Americans actually drive.
Why WheelPrice was holding it
WheelPrice was founded by Kyle Mayers and Walid "Wally" Namane, two University of Connecticut friends who reconnected over a shared frustration: there was no specialized, trustworthy marketplace for buying and selling enthusiast car wheels. They built one. Since launching, the company has run on the kind of credibility that is hard to manufacture and easy to lose — buyer-and-seller protection, specs-based listings, and a roster of industry endorsements that includes Craig Donnelly, president of BBS of America, listed by name on the marketplace's own homepage.
That relationship is the context for the preview. BBS of America, the company's North American arm, is headquartered in Braselton, Georgia, and manages the BBS NASCAR wheel program. WheelPrice and BBS have crossed paths before — the marketplace has run BBS charity wheel auctions, including a BBS Tyrrell Formula 1 auction. Handing WheelPrice the truck-and-SUV preview is a continuation of that, and a measure of how seriously the manufacturer takes the marketplace's reach into the enthusiast audience.
What it means for Charlotte
WheelPrice is a Charlotte company, and this is the kind of moment that does not usually find its way to a three-year-old startup. The Charlotte Mercury profiles WheelPrice — its founders, its model, and its ambitions — in a separate piece in the business section.
BBS, for its part, remains a company in motion. Its German cast-wheel division has filed for insolvency repeatedly — most recently in July 2024 — though the forged, motorsport, and U.S. operations that BBS of America runs are separate entities and, by the company's own account, unaffected. The truck and SUV wheel is a forward step from a brand that has spent the better part of two decades navigating financial turbulence on one side of its business while continuing to build wheels on the other.
For now, the wheel exists, it was shown in Charlotte's orbit, and a local company got to be the one holding it. The specifications, and the price, will come later.