Found a cheap solution for the wheel/tire situation.
The rims on my car (an 85) are actually 86 rims....they're identical to the ones for an 85, but the 86 had non-painted centers and grey fins, whereas the 84 & 85 had black painted center and black fins....Not sure if my late production 85 just ended up with 86 rims at the factory, or if someone swapped at some point. The rims are 'ok', but I would need to be refinish the clear coat since it's pretty beat up (easy enough given the flat design here).
That said, I prefer the black centers/fins, plus it's correct for the year, and I needed tires, so I've been watching kijiji. Sure enough, a deal came up on a set of correct 85 rims, in really nice shape, with great tires (BFG G-Force Sport Comp-2, 2017 date codes, look like they've seen very few kms) in the correct 255/50/16 size, for far less than a decent set of new tires would've cost me. So I grabbed them. They're a bit dirty, but I cleaned up the first one and with about 45 minutes of effort (wash, compound, glaze and wax) they're looking more than good enough for this car.
I am tempted to strip the clear on the unpainted surface and polish the aluminum and then re-clear, it would be easy given the design of the wheel, but I don't think it's worth the effort given how well they cleaned up.
I'll scrap the tires currently on the car, and either keep the bare rims for some track rubber as noted earlier, or I could probably sell them to cover most of what I paid for these. Either way, it's a good deal.
On the way home from picking them up....Was able to squeeze the 4 wheels, 3 people and a tricycle in a Forester presser
I actually always hated these wheels, until I started learning about them. There was quite a bit of development that went into them, and the turbines are functional pulling air in to cool the brakes.
I also learned that the early C4s (84-87) used a different offset than the later cars, or the C5, so if you want to run late C4, C5 or 4th Gen F-body wheels on an early C4 you need spacers (1 or 1.5"), which put me off my initial idea of running a set of C5 wagon wheels.
