1976 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser

I'll disagree with this to a certain extent. Steering wheels from that era are often covered because they are cracked, and that happens as the plastic shrinks due to age and actually crystallizing, not wear. Even a low-mileage, 40- or 50- year old car can have cracks in the steering wheel. I'll be that an NOS steering wheel from 1976 and still in the box would still show cracks, even if it had never been on a car.

As an example, here's the steering wheel on my '67 Delta 88. The car has 130,000 miles on it, so it's certainly not low mileage, but there is no wear in the sense of areas worn thinner or discolored or anything like that. But it is cracked in several places around the circumference, and all of the cracks are across the cross section. A classic case of the wheel cracking due to plastic shrinkage.




Here's another example from a car I used to own, a '73 Custom Cruiser. The car had about 100,000 miles on it. The steering wheel shows the same kind of cracking as the Delta 88. But here we have one large separation (more than 1/4-inch) at the 3 o'clock position in the photo. That was the only real crack of consequence. There were a couple of hairline cracks as well, visible as white lines at about the 5 o'clock and 8 o'clock positions.

There was also failure of the adhesive holding the woodgrain trim onto the front face of the wheel, and you can see where it peeled off at about the 7:30 and 8:30 locations. I would call this a failure due mostly to age but helped along by use, so I guess it could qualify as "wear."

 

You are correct. Blanket statements are seldom right. There are any number of reasons to cover a steering wheel or car upholstery for that matter. Used a steering wheel cover myself on a no air 67 Mustang because it was the fashion and kept the wheel cool. Point I was trying to make was that a wear item was not being shown.

 

All my 70’s Chrysler’s have cracked wheels. None of my 60’s GM’s.