Whether it’s the tekkies on your feet or the tekkies on your car, that choice where the rubber meets the road is an intensely individual one. But when Vodacom gives you the task of bringing back the past and rebuilding a Toyota Twincam GLI Sprinter – or Kentucky Rounder – for one lucky Kaizer Chiefs fan to win, there is really only one choice when it comes to wheels. The iconic choice.

“Wheels, or rims, are an independent choice that depend a lot on the individual, but when it came to the Kentucky Rounder there were iconic wheels that defined them,” says Gino Lange of LA Customs, the team contracted by Vodacom to search the countryside for a Kentucky Rounder that could be restored and custom-built from scratch in the colours and brand of Kaizer Chiefs for Vodacom’s Sisonke Siya Winna campaign, where one lucky Amakhosi fan will win this iconic car.

Since November last year, Lange and his crew have been hard at work at their factory in Paarl bringing to life the nostalgia of a time when the Kentucky Rounder was one of the most sought-after cars in the townships, and what every star footballer in the Eighties aspired to drive.

After finding the exact Toyota Twincam GLI Sprinter they wanted for this project, LA Customs resprayed it in the iconic gold and black colours of Kaizer Chiefs. The next step was to find the right rims and tyres that defined this car in the eyes of its devoted followers.

“Stylistically, there were certain rims that just worked with this car. Generally, it was a five-spoke rim, and sometimes the owners would split the spoke in two but still keeping to the five spokes overall. Some people were even bold enough to go with a full flat-faced rim. The actual stock rims on the Kentucky Rounder are very valuable at the moment. You get people fitting them with what they call the OEM Plus look, where you have the stock rims but at a lower profile that fits the arch better.”

But for this particular project, Lange and his team have decided to go for the best of both the old and new worlds.

“For the Kaizer Chiefs Kentucky Rounder we’ve selected the Fifteen52 brand of rims because we feel it really suits the style of this vehicle. It has a fuller face instead of a spoked rim. It’s a rim that rally drivers or drifters use. We’ve gone for their Turbomac rim with studs. It’s quite expensive, but when you’re building something iconic, you go for the best.”

Lange’s vision is to make the studs on the rims gold in the colours of the club, and to then inset the Kaizer Chiefs logo into the centre of the rims.

But there are a multitude of other factors that come into play when you’re sourcing and then fitting the correct wheels to such an iconic vehicle.

“It’s a very detailed process. For a start, you need to take into account the offset, which is where the hub sits in the centre of the wheel. That determines how far the wheel stands out or sits in the wheel arches. You also have spacers that you can put in to make the wheel stand out further, which gives it a totally different look as well.

“The bolt patterns are even something that need to be considered. On some vehicles you struggle to find rims for them because they have very different bolt patterns. These patterns are called PCD (Pitch Circle Diameter), which is literally how many bolts and lug nuts there are, and how far apart they are from each other on the rim. So the PCD determines the number of wheels you can choose from. Fortunately, this particular Kentucky Rounder has a fairly common PCD of 4100 which has loads of rim options. But if, for example, you’re sitting with a PCD of 4112, then you have maybe 10 sets you can choose from.”

And then comes the choice for the actual tyre itself.

“The tyre we’ve gone for on this project is the Dunlop semi-slick. It’s a comfortable tyre to drive all year round, and in most of the different weather conditions, you’ll encounter on the road in South Africa. The Kentucky Rounder is a car that produces a decent amount of power, so you need to fit it with a decent set of tyres to accommodate this. We’ve also selected a slightly bigger tyre profile which sits more square and fills the wheel arches a bit more.”

There’s no doubt that the Kaizer Chiefs fan that wins this car is going to be the proud owner of a vehicle where Vodacom and LA Customs have made sure no expense has been spared and no detail overlooked in bringing back the glory of a bygone era.

Win with Vodacom

To stand a chance to win this incredible vehicle, Kaizer Chiefs fans simply need to follow @VodacomSoccer on Twitter to get more details or click here to enter.

Amakhosi will also get to double their entries when they connect and recharge with KC Mobile.