Are cars over-tyred today?
Discussion
Lots from the showroom are over tyred, my fiesta has 195/45/16's and the 1.8 focus I had came with 215/40/17's from the factory. Neither car ever needs the grip that the STD tyres offer. But lots of 2nd hand cars end up with bargain basement ditchfinders on to save the £100-£200 per corner cost of replacing the OE tyres, I saw a woman getting some horrendously cheap tyres fitted to her 57 plate mondeo yesterday that while they save money wouldn't have been what I had wanted responsible for gripping the road in the vehicle I ferried my kids about in.
Let's go back a few years to when the first Lotus Elise came out. I remember reading in Performance car a review of the car with an interview with the chief engineer blokey at Lotus at that time. He was saying that from their calculations, the front tyres for the car only needed to be the width of a front motorbike tyre from e.g. a Harley. So about 145 cm. THe marketing department dictated that it needed wider tyres to look more butch and sporty, so it wore 185s. Which is still fairly narrow compared to todays offerings.
Both our cars are massively overtyred in my opinion, for design/marketing and safety reasons, in that order. There's a lot to be said for the fun of being able to do controllable, 4 wheel drifts at slow speeds in classic like the Austin A30 or Morris Minor!
Both our cars are massively overtyred in my opinion, for design/marketing and safety reasons, in that order. There's a lot to be said for the fun of being able to do controllable, 4 wheel drifts at slow speeds in classic like the Austin A30 or Morris Minor!
13" for track on the Caterham - nice cheap tyres (ex-race semi-slicks if you can find them) make excellent track day rubber.
15" on the road for that extra inch or so of ground clearance. Some people use 16" for road use. I don't get the obsession with big wheels myself - why does a wide tyre have to be on big diameter rims? Small and light please!
15" on the road for that extra inch or so of ground clearance. Some people use 16" for road use. I don't get the obsession with big wheels myself - why does a wide tyre have to be on big diameter rims? Small and light please!
CampDavid said:
pbirkett said:
CampDavid said:
Are you sure your Teg had 16 inch wheels? They all had 195/55/15s I thought (which are the perfect tyre size for a hot hatch IMO
Mine was a 98 spec JDM so came with 16s as standard.Most fun I ever had in my westy was on a private airfield using junk yard XR2 pepperpots fitted with whatever tyres the wheels came with. No grip whatsoever and the ability to drift like you were in a go-kart. Contrast that with the normal 205 32r or 48r tyres, which required a high level of concentration due to the more snappy nature and much higher corner speeds.
Cactussed said:
Zod said:
I have a car with 275s on the back and another with 285s. Both will come unstuck easily with a bit of pressure from the right foot.
Which one is the Polo? 
Crusoe said:
my 245s on 3lr z4 were sliding around a lot this morning, italian tune up before it's MOT 
very slippery in the cold and damp spinning up in third in a straight line even with plenty of tread left. In the dry you would struggle to get wheel spin unless you were really trying though, probably a good safe compromise for most conditions on the road, though 165 section rears on a 1.8 sport mx5 was some of the most fun track time I've had.
Turns out I have broken rear springs and my car is un-roadworthy till it's fixed oops. MOT fail but should be covered under warranty. very slippery in the cold and damp spinning up in third in a straight line even with plenty of tread left. In the dry you would struggle to get wheel spin unless you were really trying though, probably a good safe compromise for most conditions on the road, though 165 section rears on a 1.8 sport mx5 was some of the most fun track time I've had.Herman Toothrot said:
On a daily driver I think you want it to stick to the road well so other than the daft costs involved wide tyres are a good thing. On fun cars a bit less tyre is good, my MX5 has 260bhp going through 195's
My thoughts exactly. I never understand this idea of making sports cars corner at the sort of speeds you can only really exploit on a track. Likewise, the fact that the average numptie's hatchback can go round corners a lot quicker than they think is probably no bad thing.
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