Newbie needing lighting/surface/backdrop studio tips

[scytus]

A bit of information.. I've been trying to put together a photography setup for my fathers' business, namely for automotive wheels. I got the camera in, now I need to set up an area for the images to be taken of his products. The room that the images would be set up in has one wide window to the side, which I plan to cover up.


I don't have too big of a budget, and was considering these two kits:


CowboyStudio Photography Kit


Fancierstudio 1000watt Lighting Kit


Then questions arose, would I need a shoot-through or a bounce umbrella for my purposes? or would softbox be more ideal? What surface, what backdrop? To know how to appropriately answer those questions, one must also know what end result would be ideal, and what product one is trying to highlight.


As I was looking around for inspiration as to how to take the pictures, I found some:

I'll be taking pictures of wheels, not vehicles, but the visualization that's important here is the surface & background. I was originally going to set up a desk in front of the backdrop, and cover it with some sort of black cloth, but I felt it was far too bland. When I saw these, I much preferred the reflective surface look, and think it will suit it well, but I have no idea how to recreate the reflective surface in the first picture (not to mention the second), I was thinking of getting a sheet of metal and resting the wheel atop that, with the black muslin backdrop? But what color would the surface be.. How would one even blend the surface with the backdrop seamlessly? as that seems it might be an issue as well.


Also the lighting technique is extremely important. Being quite new to the field, I hit up Google searching for suggestions, and unfortunately most suggestions were those that had portrait photography in mind, not of inanimate objects; such as metal/alloy.


I was thinking for the alloy wheels, a cold lighting setting would work (maybe blue-ish/silver-ish?) not dissimilar to how the wheels in this picture look:

But I did also like the white-ish lighting that was present in the first picture with the black Ferrari. I have no idea why type of umbrellas to use, I was leaning towards shoot-through as that's what was included in the kit, or would softbox's be better?


I'd appreciate any help, I am again quite the newblet :]