The wheels I got were Volk TE37SL Black Edition by Rays Engineering. The TE37's are a trademark wheel in the Japanese tuning car community and the SL's stand for "Super Lap" which have more advanced forging methods to make the wheel even lighter.
This article has a great history on the heritage of the infamous Volk TE37:
https://www.speedhunters.com/2013/05/touring-evolution-the-volk-racing-te37/
The reason behind the price of these wheels are that unlike conventional wheels which are cast, these wheels are forged.
Cast Wheels:
Cast wheels are molten metal that's poured into a mold then cooled. Most of the wheels on the market are cast and most of the cars we buy come with cast wheels. The result is that when molten metal is poured into a mold and cooled, it may introduce uneven metal composition, air bubbles, pores, or weaknesses somewhere in the wheel. The result of this weakness is that the wheels must be bigger, heavier or stronger to accomodate the forces that the car is undergoing under any hard driving.
Forged wheels:
Forged wheels are where the metal (normally aluminum) is a solid "billet" and a very high pressure press machines compresses this metal into the wheel's shape under extreme heat (Ray's uses a 10,000 ton forging machine to do this). The result is that the solid piece of metal has the metal grain structure internally aligned and pressed very tightly. This results in an extremely much stronger wheel. Because the forging technique produces a much stronger wheel, it can be cut to be lighter without losing any functionality, or risking reduction of the wheels reliability.
So the main pursuit of buying forged wheels is to make them lighter. But how much lighter? In most cases, it's only a few lb's difference. But the key is that your wheel isn't stationary mass. It's rotational mass, and when you can remove unsprung weight in these key areas, it can aid in faster acceleration and taking some of the "lugginess" of heavier wheels.
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