Whats wrong with Rota's?

[botchilah]

This thread is getting stupid. I'm a Filipino and I love ROTA's. Admittedly I don't admire their penchance to copy the design of a lot of JDM wheels. If you hate ROTA's for that, then it's an opinion which I'll have to respect. But calling them JUNK just because there are a number of incidents where the wheels broke and then calling ROTA's in general junk is plain stupid.

I've used ROTA's for over a decade on a variety of cars. including my previously 'caged Evo IV track, hill-climb and rally car. NEVER had a problem with 17' ROTA's. Sure it doesn't make for good random sampling, but hell, 2 or 3, even 4 broken sets of ROTA's also don't make for good sampling to determine that ALL ROTA's are bad.

I'm not cheap either (as some people might think I'm defending ROTA's because it's the only set I can afford), I've got a set of 18' TE37 FORGED MAGNESIUM wheels in my Supra that cost about U$7,000 for a set of four and had to be bought through a JGTC / Super GT 300 team because at that time Ray's didnt want to sell these wheels for non-motorsports use. I've also got 57 Motorsport wheels on my Yaris which cost me just over a thousand bucks. But I would have bought ROTA's for either of my cars if they had the design / look that I wanted.

Sure, the JDM stuff are better. No question. But are they so much better to justify the cost? IMHO, no.

If you ride the FIA approved curbing at your local tracks all the time, ditch hook the car at every corner (like Takumi's secret move using the rain gutters lol) in an SS or jump your car regularly (I used to in my Evo IV) at 80mph, and find that the wheels are not damaged at all, after years and years of abuse, heck these ROTA's must be quite good enough.

IME cars with ROTA wheels that get damaged usually have suspension issues i.e. the suspension isn't up to par holding up the car and when the wheels go throuh rough stuff, the suspension isn't able to absorb the shock and the wheel and the non-absorbing suspension components take the load and get damaged.

Here in the Philipines, almost every drifter I know runs ROTA's. Almost all of the rally guys I know run ROTA's. Almost all locally manufactured cars in the Philippines still use ROTA wheels (the others, like Honda use Enkei, but also made locally).

ROTA AFAIK is also a licensed manufacturer for Kosei wheels in the past, and for some Ralli-Art wheels which were exported too for the Pajero / Montero SUV. There are countless others.

Some people obviously think ROTA's are made in a freaking shed here in the Philippines. Ugh some people can be so very stupid.............

I've seen original TE37 wheels in an N1 Civic race car get its spoked ripped off a nasty accident on track. This car was owned and run by the local Rays distributor (Autoplus). I'm not knocking Ray's, but as some of the more enlightened ones have said, serious damage can happen to any wheel. I've seen a rare Porsche 993 RSR get its OEM 3-piece BBS wheels ripped off after an accident and trailered to the local Porsche dealership. Not knocking Porsche and BBS, but it can happen to these too. And the Porsche wasn't even going really fast, something like 100kmh or so. I've also seen Sportec wheels from Switzerland (U$4,000 set) get its spokes ripped off the hub of a heavily modified B5 A4 Turbo Quattro when it got into a disagreement with a big pothole in our highway. Or a good friend's Evo 5 which ran the curbing at our local track one too many times lose all the pressure in his tire because the wheel got bent. The Evo 5 had OEM OZ F1 wheels on Bridgestone SO2's back then. I can go on and on and on about expensive wheels that are 'supposedly' better than ROTA's get damaged just as easily as ROTA's, which ultimately means par for the course for all these wheels, regardless of brand / make / origin.

PS I know the main man at ROTA. Nice (very big but nice) guy. I've been to their factory a number of times too. It's a start of the art factory, ISO certified and looks way better than some sweat shops out there in the US.

You can HATE rota because they copy wheels from other manufacturers. But to call them JUNK because of a handful of cases is plain stupid. Here in the Philippines, I've yet to hear of any accident like that involving ROTA wheels. And yes we drive fast here. Faster than most guys in the US because we effectively have no speed limit i.e. cops don't care.