Price: $134-219
Install difficulty: 1/10
Mod type: wheel/tire
Value: 8/10
Disadvantages: are not fully forged
Advantages: lightweight, great color and finish, plenty of sizes
Even if you haven’t been in the Miata world long you have probably seen at least some of 949’s 6UL’s on a track or street Miata at a show or online. Why are they popular? Well they aren’t particularly stunningly good looking wheels so that clues us in. These wheels are some of the lightest wheels on the market that you don’t have to sell off your internal organs to afford. I bought a full set of 15X9s for $700 brand new! Most race wheels you can spend that much on each wheel. How do they do it? Well they are not fully forged, they are flow formed. Not quite as strong but much cheaper.
After getting tired of my used aftermarket 16X7’s on 205 45 tires and spending months of time looking into what wheel suited my need the best I was left with either the choice of the 15X8/9 4th generation 6UL. To be totally honest a 15×8 with grippy tires would have been plenty of grip for my supercharged car. However I wanted to prepare for the future and look good in the meantime. So yes I choose the widest wheels I could fit under stock fenders without too much trouble because they look cool. And yes an x9 will most defiantly require a roll, nothing crazy but you should probably have the fenders rolled before you try and test fit. One important thing to know before you decide on these wheels is that YOU NEED COILOVERS to fit some sizes of 6UL’s.
Unlike most wheels that try to run low offsets for the sake of being #HELLAFLUSH these squeeze as much meat as they can into a functional area of the fender well and thus will not fit with the wide springs on stock suspension. After fitting these wheels with 225 45 15 BFG rival S tires I decided to see what they weighed compared to my old wheels with bald tires, they weighed half a pound less!!! Yes a wheel 2″ wider with tires to fit weighed in at 36.5 lbs.! For reference from what I can find, most Volks weigh about half a pound less per wheel than 6uls in this size. After getting the car back on the ground I was impressed with how good the look on the car in person, they have wheel lip!
SPEED REVIEW 