Since my long-term plan is to refurbish our Cruisette to be sympathetic with the late Art Deco period I made the choice to go with reproduction, period appropriate, tube-type bias ply tires. These were sourced from Coker Tire, which is THE company to go to for authentic period tires. The new tires were matched to the size of the old tires so there would be no issues with the ride height. Ultimately I settled on 650-16 Firestone whitewalls:
http://store.coker.com/650-16-firestone-3-1-4-ww.html
In a bit of serendipitous good luck Coker Tire was attending a monster antique car swap-meet in Springfield, Ohio and I was able to arrange to pick up the tires and tubes at the meet. Wandering through the show I was on the lookout for some sort of vintage car taillights to replace the atrocious late 60's plastic units currently on the trailer. I struck out at this but I did find six glass amber beehive lenses that fit the clearance lights, and I stumbled across a very well preserved "Universal Night Owl" tail lamp/license plate lamp fixture which was an exact match to the VERY rusty original on the Cruisette. You've got to love life when it hands you 50 year old spare parts!
Once these tires were mounted, balanced, and reinstalled our '52 was ready for the road once more.
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