Feel as if others stand head and shoulders over you? Chances are that what you lack in stature will be made up for in the wheel department – but only if you’re a man. A researcher in Austria has uncovered a strong inverse correlation between male height and the diameter rim a person selects for their car.

“It seems more than co-incidental,” commented Dr. Felix Schmutzig from the Linz Institute. “Our study involved approximately fifteen hundred participants, ranging in height from 156 centimetres (5’1) to 193 centimetres (6’3), and the results show a clear preference from shorter men towards wheels with a rim diameter of or greater than 19-inches.” Taller men, in turn, were more likely to maintain standard factory fitted wheels on their vehicles. Dr. Schmutzig added that the shortest man in the study had recently purchased a US built SUV that he’d “pimped up” with 28-inch chrome “monsters,” to quote the driver’s own nickname for the wheels.

Curiously, this phenomenon does not appear to apply to women. From the 400 or so females participating in the study, no discernible relationship between height and wheel size could be ascertained. Addressing media in Linz, Austria on April 1, Dr. Schmutzig says that he now intends to widen the scope of his study to determine whether any additional correlation between physical attributes and tyre, wheel or vehicle size can be found.