Who Has The Best Wheel Visualizer (and why it’s us!)

We don’t mean to brag. Well actually, yeah we kind of do. But it’s bragging based on research, trust us. On our website RentAWheel.com we have our top of the line visualizer available to help you, well, visualize what your new rims and tires are going to look like on your car. 

It’s pretty sweet technology and when you’re looking for new rims to spice up your ride you need to be able to see the wheels on your car. You obviously don’t want to buy anything that wont match your style, and most places aren’t going to give you the opportunity to “try on” rims without purchase. 

Which is exactly why we developed our car wheel visualizer. It locks in your cars year, make and model and follows you around our page as you browse options. You can even share the image if you want to show off your recently purchased but not yet installed new rims to your friends. 

And let’s get something straight, our visualizer is the best you’ll find online. 

But we don’t want to just tell you that it’s the best without any proof. So we did the unthinkable: we went to our competitors and tested everyone else’s visualizers to compare to ours, so that you don’t have to. (If they even had a visualizer, that is.)

So without further ado, here’s what we found from some of our competitors in what we’re calling, “The Visualizer-Royale.” 

(We know, there’s probably a better name for it but it’s the results that count.)

Firestone:

We went into this experiment pretty confident, but our first round competitor really took that feeling to the next level. 

Firestone’s tire search literally broke down into computer code on our first, second and third try. They might be having a bad day but when you show up to the playoffs of tire shop visualizers there are no days off and no excuses. 

Firestone, due to your complete absence, we are giving you the rank of last. 

Goodyear:

On to our second round competitor, Goodyear. They get points on the board for their search actually working (yes, we really don’t want Firestone to forget.) But that’s a pretty low bar, so let’s continue. 

For some reason their search values are all out of place, which makes the process irritating. They put the “date” box at the top, but want to know “make” and “model” first- why not just put “date” below those? But we digress. Poor presentation could be forgiven if the search and visualizer work well. 

But they don’t. Lord forgive you if your car is more than 20 years old because apparently Goodyear tires don’t exist before 2004. Or they do, but they suggest coming in to the shop or calling for more information. Which sort of defeats the purpose of an online service. 

On the vehicles the search did work for, they tack on several confusing deals and incentives. Who wants to deal with rebates? And who has a Goodyear credit card for their member exclusive $100 off? 

They do offer $25 off installation on some of their available tires, which admittedly we do not. But then again, it’s hard to put a discount on a service we offer for free. 

We also have to dock off the points they earned at the beginning because, although their search works sometimes, they don’t have any available visualizer as far as we can tell. So good luck getting an idea of what your $800 ($700 if you have the Goodyear credit card for some reason) tires will look like on your car. 

Goodyear, because your search actually works, but doesn’t work very well, we give you the rank of second to last. AKA fifth place. 

Les Schwab:

We really didn’t want this competition/experiment to be too easy of a win so we were really hoping someone would pull through with a somewhat decent visualizer. 

Les Schwab starts off fine, their search options are in order of which you fill them in. But again, if your car is pushing 20 years the options become pretty miserable. 

Not to mention Les Schwab only shows you the price of one tire at a time, which we find a little misleading. Add that to the arm and a leg cost they hit you with for installation, we really weren’t impressed. 

Les Schwab we give you the rank of fourth place, but you’re so close to tying with Goodyear. 

Carid:

We hear you in the back, you think we’re just testing big names that primarily sell tires for easy points? Bring it on. 

Carid is a New Jersey based maintenance and performance boosting auto specialist that sells and ships wheels, tires, and more. Sound like more even competition?

The visualizer available, which they call the “Configurator,” is tucked away and difficult to find. You have to actually go look at the details of a specific rim and then notice the small icon that has the word “configurator” on it. 

Once you’re in the configurator, which opens up in a separate window by the way, they actually do a fairly decent job of showing you the wheels on the car. 

However, they present it in a way that you have to scroll down through the options, click the one you like, and then lose your place scroll back up to actually see it. Not to mention scrolling back down to click on the details icon for more information. 

What really bothers us though is that in the “Configurator,” if you land on a set of rims that you enjoy and want more information on, you would think hitting the “details” button would show you the price and availability. But no, you would actually have to copy the name of the wheel, paste it back into the main pages search bar and work from there.

We don’t think it’s high maintenance to think this can be way easier. In fact we know it can be easier because…our’s is easier than that. 

Add on top of that that Carid only has one location that it ships from and isn’t involved with the installation process, we give them the rank of third place. 

Discount tires: honestly not bad. Too many questions for us personally but help find what you’re looking for. Shows you the rims on the car but it’s very limited as far as color options go. And their rim selection is laughable. 2nd place. 

Discount Tires:

Yes, discount tires sells custom wheels as well. And their website and visualizer actually aren’t bad. If you’re looking for exactly what they have. 

They ask a lot of questions up front, which is a bit of a hassle but can be worth it to find exactly what you’re looking for. 

When you find a set of wheels you like from the list of acceptable options they give you depending on your car, you can choose to “see this on my vehicle.” You can change the color to match your car specifically and they seem to have a wide range of options.

Where the funk starts to come in is that they pop up with an error every now and then that they don’t, “have pictures of the combination you’re looking for. Please try another.” This isn’t great considering that’s the whole purpose of a visualizer, you want to be able to see all of the combination options you could be shopping for. 

Overall we were honestly surprised by Discount Tires, we didn’t expect much from them but they website and visualizer is fairly precise and well put together. Just need to work on making sure they have all of the possible wheel/vehicle combinations available. 

We grant you, Discount Tires, second place. Mostly because we love an underdog. 

Rent A Wheel: 

What can we say? We checked out the car wheel visualizer that Rent A Wheel has available on their website and it works great. It shows you your specific car and paint job, pops up pictures of the vehicle/wheel combination when you’re shopping for new rims, and locks in your information even if you leave for a bit. 

Alright, we know we can’t really judge our own visualizer without bias. But we do want to talk to about it without sounding too full of ourselves. 

Our visualizer is easy to locate anywhere on our website- it’s just waiting for you with its own tab right at the top. We have just about every year of every model of every make, so even if you’re still driving around that sick 1994 Ford F-150, we’ve got you covered. Check out our truck wheel visualizer to see for yourself.

Once you input your information, we show you your car and right underneath a list of suggested wheels and tires that will match your vehicle. So you don’t need to go find the right rim and then try to see it on your car only to find disappointment- we do the organizing for you right there.

Want to see the rims you picked out on your car? No problem. After you’ve skimmed through our suggested list of options, click on the rim you want and we take you to the details page that includes the price of a set of four, all the size and rating information, as well as a picture of your car with your soon-to-be purchased wheels. Easy as that.

Sure, the other companies have visualizers. Some even work. But we’re pretty confident that at RentAWheel.com you’re going to find everything you’re looking for, no problems at all.