12 suppliers · 2 wheels · updated continuously
Every factory listed here was contacted directly and asked the same questions about the same reference specification. What follows is what we do with the answers, including the answers we do not get.
Quotes are requested at a single specification, the same one for every factory. A price for a different construction is not converted or adjusted to fit the column; it is set aside and the question is asked again. Two numbers only belong side by side if they answer the same question.
"Rotary forged" and "flow formed" describe a cast centre with a spun barrel. It is a legitimate process and it produces a decent wheel, but it is not forging, and a supplier who answers the forging question with it is recorded as having described flow forming.
The reverse matters just as much. "Machined from a forged blank" is ordinary forging and is recorded as forged. Suppliers routinely answer this question in the negative, too, because we ask them to: "fully forged, not flow-formed" is a claim of forging, not a confession of it.
Whether a wheel is forged and how many pieces it has are independent. A cast three-piece is an honest product and is not marked down for being one, and a forged monoblock is not "fewer pieces" as though that were a defect. Neither field is ever inferred from the other, and the number of constructions a factory can build is recorded as a capability rather than being narrowed to whichever one they last quoted.
When a supplier does not answer a question twice, the sheet says not disclosed. Nothing is estimated, inferred or filled in to make a row look complete, and a blank is never quietly treated as a zero.
That rule exists because the opposite has a direction. Landed cost was once computed by treating an unquoted freight charge as nothing, which made the factory that withheld its shipping cost look like the cheapest on the page. Landed cost is now shown only when both the wheel price and the freight were quoted, so declining to answer can never look better than answering.
The same principle runs the other way: a supplier is never penalised for telling us more. One who quotes a single all-in figure covering wheels, shipping and duties has answered more completely than one who quotes ex works, and is recorded that way rather than being dropped from the comparison for refusing to break it down.
Every value carries its origin. Figures a factory gave us directly are printed in black; figures taken from a platform listing are printed grey and labelled. The two are never merged, and a listing claim is never allowed to stand in for an answer to a question. Certifications are shown only as the supplier stated them, because listings overclaim and rendering an unvetted list beside a short honest one would reward the overclaim.
Naming a certification and having sent the certificate are also separate facts. A supplier who says they hold DOT approval but sends nothing is recorded as having claimed it without a document, and a supplier who says plainly that they cannot supply one is recorded as having said so, which is a useful and honest answer rather than a failure.
The vetting score is out of 100 and combines store rating, store age, review count, response time, reorder rate and transit time. Every axis is judged against a fixed standard rather than against the other factories in the set, so a young shop is thin whether or not a rival is thinner.
A rating counts for as much as its sample supports: 5.0 from two buyers is not a better rating than 4.8 from eighty-seven, only a less certain one, so ratings are weighted by review count before scoring. The result is scaled by how many axes a factory actually has, so a sparse record cannot outrank a complete one on a lucky average. Expect real numbers in the 40s to 60s.
Price is deliberately not part of the score. "Cheapest" and "most trustworthy" are different questions, and scoring them together meant a factory's trustworthiness moved when a competitor happened to quote low. Price is shown as its own figure and drives its own sort.
We do not sell wheels and we do not take payment from the factories for placement. We do not give fitment advice, because whether a wheel clears your particular car is a judgement we are not positioned to make. And we describe wheels by construction and geometry rather than as another maker's product, which is both more accurate and more honest about what a factory is actually offering to build.
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