In the 1950’s, Goodyear was playing around with Neothane as a replacement for polyurethane used in tires. What’s wild is that neothane is transparent. This allowed customers to put tiny colored lights in them and you had tires that matched the color of your car. You could even use them as turn signals or brake lights.

Unfortunately Neothane was more expensive than polyurethane, didn’t last as long, and performed poorly on wet surfaces and under heavy braking.

It was demonstrated on a custom built Golden Sahara II car.

Honestly, I don’t see why these absolutely couldn’t make a comeback for blinged out cars today. Line them with LED’s and you’d have quite the head turner.