Justifiable Levels of Grip

[Zak33]

A question for you guys.

Do you think it would be justifiable for manufacturers to put competition class tyres on their cars for road tests?

There are some great tyres in the world of road cars, but nothing even close to the tarmac tyres used by track cars and rally cars.

Do you think it would be acceptable for a manufacturer to install, as factory standard equipment, tyres so good and so expensive, and quite hard to find in retail tyre outlets, in an attempt to drastically improve their cars for road tests, magazine article and such like?

If you peruse the forecourts of Mercedes AMG dealers and Porsche dealer, you will still find tyres that are retail customer orientated. Things that, with a bit of notice, your tyre outlet will be able to get for you.

But it has come to my notice that Mitsubishi are puting some deadly serious tyres on their EvoVIII MR FQ range (300 bhp and up). But their vanilla version (mere 260 bhp) manages with humble (read: awesome) Bridgestone Potenza.

So....what I am saying is: if you drove an MX-5 or a Ford FOcus RS, or a Clio 182 and fell in love...and then found out it had rally tyres, with a life expectancy of a few thousand miles, would you be gutted, would you feel that was acceptable, would you BUY them to replace the originals or go with more normal tyres?

[Moby-Dick]

A Pal of mine worked at Milbrook when the VX220 did its tyre tests there....
they came in with pilots , and left the F1 GSD-3's

I know my tyres will only last me 5 or 6 thousand miles and I know that skimping on tyres is the fastest way to a bent car/casualty you can have.

I'll turn your last statement around.... if you bought an MX-5 with Nankyangs and Ventura's , you'd be changing those tyres before you can say Tailslide.....

[Lowe]

Go with more normal tyres I'm afriad. Spending that much on rubber every few thousand is silly. Hell, I cried the other day when I saw the state of my Eagles and they're only a few thousand old miles old. But that's just me I guess.

If the handling of the car when on the test drive was that much better due to the tyres I'd feel robbed. But this is nothing new. When the 5 GTT was new, Renault raised the boost on test cars to about 15 psi (standard is 9-10psi). This was a bit cheeky, since obviously it got rave reviews...

Saying all this though, if you're buying a 30k Evo, and can afford to RUN a new Evo with all the diff oil changes, etc etc then new tyres every few thousand miles wouldn't bother you one iota..

[Zak33]

you say that but its in human nature to save money, even having spent a small fortune.

I know a man with an Audi A4 Quattro Estate Tip tronic. Full leather...the works....huge money.

His pride and joy.

Audi wanted £220 for its first service....just oil change.

He laughed in their face. Went to Halfords, £50.

18 mnoths later his Quattro system went Pete Tong and he had no warranty.

So ....having spent in excess of £30,000 on a car, he felt robbed at £220 for an oil change.. ANd maybe he WAS being robbed....but its the same thing. He felt it was unjustified and he skimped. It cost him LOTS of money to fix....AND no dealer would buy it from him....it had no warranty and was worth less than half EVEN though they wanted it for their forecourts...couldn't touch it.

I KNOW no one here would wanna pay £220 for an oil change....but if you'd spent £30,000 on a car, and had £500 per month finace on it......would YOU wanna pay that much.

Same exact thing with people saving money on tyres. They do it ALL THE TIME!!!!

[CocoPops]

People are having the same thing with the 182.
The tyres are "specially designed" by Michelin and are £140 per corner from Renault due to their "stiffened sidewalls".

The cheapest they can be had is £78 per corner from mytyres.co.uk, ie still more than the average brand.

[Zak33]

do you feel its wrong though?

[XTR]

Little old biddy in her Ford Fiesta doesnt need to worry about tyres.... As long as they are legal and doesnt hurt her purse to much then she will be happy. 4 tyres for £75 ish ish all fitted and balanced. Bargain

but the performance of the tyre will be shocking. The old biddy doesnt want performance though.

A boy racer in a Ford Fiesta will obviously be interested in tyre performance as he doesnt want to be sliding of the road damaging his £500 bodykit etc.

Car reviews should be tested with the standard run of the mill tyres which will come on the car... otherwise its an unfair and misleading review.

Its like overclocking a CPU on a benchmark and not telling people........

[Gordy]

There are already plenty of common cars that have tyres that are difficult to source. My mums 206cc had a puncture (No spare in the cc) and had to wait a week for a replacement! Even peugot had no stock of the tyres.

My dads porsche cayenne was even worse, he had a problem with the front tires wearing on the inside dangerously and was only spotted at the services by a kind trucker as dad had the car on full lock. On the trip from the lakes to bristol there was nearly half a dozen porsche dealers none of whom who had the tire in stock, so after consulting the AA he had to drive home on dangerously worn tyres that could have blown at any moment. In the end porsche gave him a free set.

As long as the dealers stock the tyres the manufacturers should pick the best tire imho

[Zak33]

not quite what Iwas getting at.

Not a single one of the 206 or Cayenne tyres are COMPETITION TYRES.

Imagine of the Cayenne had Paris Dakkar class tyres on it.

that's more akin to it.

The Renault Clio 182 tyre wall story is the best example......whether people even KNOW about it is the worry.

[TiG]

Depends on how it is reviewed, If its reviewed as a buyers guide, this car will do X, the tyres should be what the consumer is going to be buying. IF however its just a performance car magazine on about how amazing this car handles, then i think its justified to put comptetion tyres on it.

My tyres are BLOOMING expensive, and even tho this current set has only been on 11 months ish, I'm not that many months before i need a new set, still i don't think cutting down on quality is an option.

TiG

[Barakka]

...would you BUY them to replace the originals or go with more normal tyres?

I think I would be a bit miffed if they were hyper expensive tyres that were on it to increase the performance. But if we're talking mostly about specialist models like the Mitsi Evo etc. then it's something that I would probably know about before I bought it. If you're in that league of car you should really check these things out beforehand.

The most important thing is that replacing them with "normal" tyres doesn't affect the safety of the car, otherwise when people skimp on them* they are endangering. Having said that though, surely swapping the EVO ones for "normal" tyres would have an effect on safety as it wouldn't stop or hold the road as well, but it'll still accellerate just as quick.

*It amazes me how much people are willing to skimp on them, I was talking to someone yesterday who has "Two tyres which drop to about 5-10psi every couple of weeks" he hasn't had them looked at or replaced because "can't be ar$3d"

[Rave]

Audi wanted £220 for its first service....just oil change.

He laughed in their face. Went to Halfords, £50.

18 mnoths later his Quattro system went Pete Tong and he had no warranty.

If the failure of the Quattro system was clearly not because the wrong engine oil had been used, I'd have been inclined to sue Audi for selling me a car that's not of merchantable quality (or whatever the word is). It's clearly not reasonable to expect the drive system of a car to only last 18 months, so if it obviously was the result of manufacturing defect Audi should be obliged to rectify it, service history or not.

I agree it's a bit daft to knacker the resale value of your car by not getting a service history....but only if you're planning to sell it. If you plan to keep the car for 10 years you might as well save the money by servicing it yourself since the difference a FSH makes after 10 years is probably a few hundred quid at most.

As for your original question....they should supply the car for testing on the tyres it'll be sold with. I'd expect any reputable magazine to verify that the car they're testing hasn't been obviously hopped up TBH, it's not hard to check what the tyres are and whether or not they're standard.

When I did my work experience at Prodrive, we took one of the WRC cars to a Pirelli tyre launch, fitted with the road tyre that Pirelli were launching. Although the launch was at MIRA, the journos were German so a German driver took them all for a spin in the car. Afterwards I had a ride in the car with one of the mechanics and was totally blown away by the speed at which the car could corner, and accelerate out from the apex. If that was a road tyre, I suspect that on pukka race tyres the grip would have popped a few fuses in my brain.

Rich :¬)

[Rave]

*It amazes me how much people are willing to skimp on them, I was talking to someone yesterday who has "Two tyres which drop to about 5-10psi every couple of weeks" he hasn't had them looked at or replaced because "can't be ar$3d"

One of my tyres loses about 5psi a week. I've done 10,000 miles on it that way. It still grips fine, so....<shrugs>

Rich :¬)

[Barakka]

One of my tyres loses about 5psi a week. I've done 10,000 miles on it that way. It still grips fine, so....<shrugs>

Rich :¬)

Sorry wasn't clear, drops TO about 5-10psi , well he said "drops to about 5-ish takes about 5-10 mins to fill it back up" so could have meant bar, but either way... And he commutes on the motorway daily

[Rave]

It was clear don't worry. I guess that guy has a more serious problem than me. My Dad had a blowout on the motorway after either he or his partner damaged the tyre by kerbing it; what annoys me is that they just seem to laugh about being bad drivers.

Rich :¬)

[dkmech]

When people say that one mustn't save on tyres - it all depends on your driving styles and prevalent conditions. If you drive like a loonatic you will need good tyres to keep you on the road. If you are driving like a granny it is likely that you hardly ever need more grip than budget tyres provide. You'd only need it when breaking harshly in the wet if an obstacle appears suddenly. With granny driving style this happens less often than if you pretend that you are a Schumacher.

Just like you lot feel competition tyres will be a step too far, for most drivers high performance road tyres are excessive.