Nowadays, weight reduction is great opportunity for automotive components design due to meet the structural strength without reducing the components safety. A classical try-and-error approach to design the automotive components in industries is inadequate which mean new methods are needed to enhance the design process. An improvement of the component can be achieved by adopting suitable optimization techniques at the early design stage. In this paper, the problem of automotive component design; steel wheel rim design in a view of weight reduction was tackled by means of shape optimization method. Design methodology was proposed to the original design of selected wheel rim and was continued optimized them by various reduction targets. The optimized design together with the datum has been analyzed and the results were compared and discussed. Shape optimization with 15% of reduction target at steel wheel rim was the best optimal design and it was met the design criteria and safety factor. By applying shape optimization, weight of steel wheel also has been reduced by using proper reduction target. The methodology has been proven to be successful in finding innovative and efficient layouts for automotive components design.