Very cool!!

I was aware of pinstriped wheels from the 1930s and 40s, but I thought that practice had been abandoned by the 1950s.  I guess it hadn't.

Thanks so much for sharing this with us!

Did some quick online "research" by looking at brochures, and here are a few of my observations:

1) Most brochures from that era have illustrations of the car, so depending on the level of detail in the brochures, they may or may not show the pinstripe.

2) Typically higher line cars were promoting full wheel covers or trim rings, so those brochures did not tend to include wheels that would show pinstripes.

3) In general, most manufacturers pinstriped wheels in the '30s and '40s, but the practice appeared to be mostly gone by the 1950s (roughly).  I've seen cars from the twenties and possibly earlier with pinstriped wheels as well.

4) Brochures for Canadian Pontiacs were not very plentiful for 40s-50s era, and American Pontiac brochures tended to show full wheel covers.

5) I could, however find evidence of pinstriped wheels on the Chevrolet brochures - mostly in the 'engineering features' brochure - definitely up to 1955, and less obviously into 1956 and maybe 1957, but on '56 and '57 it wasn't clear if it was a pinstripe, or glare/shadows on the wheel.

My conclusion, based on very limited information with a lot of assumptions on my part:

- That it was a styling feature carried over from earlier days, probably to break up the expanse of the stamped steel disk type wheels as they switched from spoked wheels in the twenties.  With a large flat expanse between the small hub cap and the outer rim, a pinstripe would make the wheel more visually interesting.

- As full wheel covers became more popular and available, companies dropped the pinstriping practice on the cheaper cars with small hubcaps.

- Most manufacturers stopped by the late '40s/early '50s, but it appears that GM carried on the practice until 1956 or 1957.  After that I couldn't find any evidence of it.

- That while it's not clear whether American Pontiacs carried this feature so late, it would seem logical that Canadian Pontiacs would, since they were based on Chevrolets anyhow.

Here are a few examples I found:

All the images below can be found at this link:  http://www.oldcarbrochures.org/United%20States/Chevrolet/index.html

1929 Chevrolet:

Curiously, Chevrolet went from wood spoke to steel disk wheels in the mid twenties, and then switched to wire spokes from 1931 to 35-36, when stamped steel wheels were phased in.

1938 Chevrolet:

1947 Chevrolet:

1950 Chevrolet:

1953 Chevrolet:

1955 Chevrolet - note the text about hubcaps gives specifics about the stripe:

By 1956, the stripe is still there, but there is no info about it:

In the 1957 engineering features brochure, it's not obvious that the stripe is there, but looks like it may be in the illustration of the car:

No evidence of the stripe in 1958:

So, that's what I found on the subject.  It was fun to look through the old info to find some minutia that I wasn't previously aware of.  

I imagine there are folks here who can add some more info to this.  My observations were just from brochures online, which aren't always accurate as things on the line often changed after the brochure illustrations were done.  Real world observations always add a lot to documentation in any form of research.

The geek in me would like to see the machine GM used to paint the pinstripes on the wheels.