MTD Flashback: When Tire Giants Walked the Earth

Editor's note: this article originally appeared in the June 2006 issue of MTD.

July 2005 wasn't a good month for the 17-foot tall lady standing in front of Peoria Plaza Tire in Peoria, Ill.

The woman, known affectionately as "Vanna Whitewall," suffered a broken right ankle when a car careened into her one day.

It wasn't long before the resilient Vanna, all 450 pounds of her, was propped back up - reclaiming her position as Peoria's top Tire Giant and proving you can't keep a good "Uniroyal Gal" down.

Made out of fiberglass, Tire Giants and their sub-species, Uniroyal Gals and Muffler Men, came into prominence during the 1960s. (Plaza Tire's statue was commissioned by U.S. Rubber, which became Uniroyal in 1967.)

The original molds were done in the late-1950s to make Paul Bunyan statues, according to Doug Kirby, publisher of www.roadsideamerica.com, which has catalogued nearly 300 of the monoliths.

A California-based company called Fiberglass International Inc. took the concept national.

The firm's owner, Steve Dashew, "would go on sales pitches to big corporations and convince them to buy hundreds of these things. A company like Uniroyal would order a lion's share and even sell molds to other companies,"

Most Uniroyal Gals resembled Jackie Kennedy, says Kirby, "because Dashew had a crush on her."

Tire Giants could be ordered with accessories. Some dealers hung tires on them.

"They are effective vehicles for promoting business. Any time they get knocked over by a storm or a college prank, they make the news."

Tire Giants still fall prey to vandals. Some have been skewered with arrows, while others have been yanked out of the ground and tossed into lakes!

Kirby says the statues fell out of favor in the 1970s as consumer tastes changed. "I think that happened across the board with even Bob's Big Boy statues."

In recent years, he's seen a renewed interest in them. "Part of it is nostalgia. People get a kick out of these things. They're viewed as symbols of individualism. All Starbucks look the same, but if you have a Tire Giant with an eye patch and a peg leg, you may have the only one in the country."

Some Tire Giants - like the one in front of the Lauterbach Tire & Auto Service store in Springfield, Ill. - have become lightning rods for civic pride.

Lauterbach Tire's statue literally lost its head three months ago when a tornado blew through town and a roof from a nearby business slammed into it. The head was found beneath some rubble by a man who worked down the street.

The owner of a local body shop called Lauterbach Tire and asked if he could reattach the statue's head, according to Brian Lauterbach, a salesman at the single-store dealership.

The operation was a success and even garnered a big write-up in Springfield's newspaper, The State Journal Register.

"We put the head back on so people knew we were open for business," says Lauterbach.