Thanks for the awesome write up Panhead. Re the link. I just did a quick Google. It's clearly biased hey.
So, for those of us whom do say 15-20k a year. Is there another tyre you would recommend mate?
Careful – long winded reply.
I know a lot of people are very passionate about their choice of tyres and they can tell you from their experiences how well they rate/compare/perform against other brands they’ve tried but I’m not so good at it and find rating tyres against other similar priced tyres to be extremely hard.
As I only drive performance cars I therefore only buy performance tyres for them, I’ve never been one to cheap out on something I feel is crucial to my family’s or my own safety.
I started driving when Goodrich T/A’s were all the rage and as much as they were a sexy addition to your car, they aquaplaned so bad in the wet you put your life in God’s hands every time you took the car out in the rain.
So purchasing higher end tyres to me is like the old saying, if you can’t afford to maintain the car properly you can’t afford to own it.
None of my cars do any significant miles per year so half my tyres are usually disposed of due to shelf life.
Soft compound sticky rear tyres usually last me around 10,000 kilometres (15,000 if I'm lucky) which takes about 6 years before I need to replace them and by that time the fronts even though they still have plenty of tread will also be replaced as they have reached their shelf life.
I’m yet to reach 5,000 kays on the Ute I picked up in March of last year and if it wasn’t for the fact I couldn’t get enough of driving it for the first few months it probably would only have half the miles it currently has on it and I consider it to be my daily.
I don’t need tyres with supersonic speed capabilities but most tyre placards fixed to performance cars will stipulate ‘Y’ standard tyres so that what they get.
All the rears tyres fitted to my cars regardless of how sticky they are will lose traction without much effort so I look for tyres that turn in well helping to reduce understeer, hence why I say I look at tyres that can handle twisty roads and it’s twisty roads that I use as a means to evaluate them.
Except for the RE003
and the new style P Zero I’ve tried all the tyres in my other post and the truth is I can’t say which of them is better at handling as they all do the job better than my driving capabilities and if I push one to the point it starts to understeer then all of them would probably understeer at that point.
Road noise doesn’t matter to me as most of my driving is urban but having grown up in the bush I could understand why it could possibly be important with you as you’d have more need then me to travel long distances on country roads plus the exhaust systems on some of my cars drown out most other noise anyway.
One other thing I do take into account is how the tyre looks and some tyres do look better than others.
I particularly like the side profile look of the Yokohama Advan Sport V105 and because it handles well it had been my favourite 285/25/20 over the OEM P Zero tyre for my C63 but that size is no longer available here in Advan or most other major brands for that matter which is the reason I’m currently trying out the Falken Azenis 453.
It’s early days so the jury is still out on my thoughts on the 453 but I will say at this stage it offers good turn-in and gives good feedback through the steering wheel and I rate it high so far.
I’m a P Zero fan myself for no reason other than they have always served me well, I don’t think they are better than other brands and nor do I think the other higher end brands are better than each other as they feel much the same to me.
I do read tyre reviews and I prefer the Aussie reviews if possible but I also find the results between different reviews to be very inconsistent and can only put it down to different conditions on the day where temperature or type of surface and so on have changed to suit brands and therefore only use them as a loose guide and not as a definitive answer to one brand being better than another.
On the cars I’m driving at the moment I’m currently running Pirelli P Zero, Falken 453, Continental SportContact 5P, Bridgestone RE050A Run Flat and Michelin Pilot Sport 4S.
So to answer your question I’d recommend everyone stick to the higher end brands and even though you may not get a million kilometres of wear like the cheaper hard compounds offer, you will get a good handling vehicle with peace of mind that is will stop when you need it too and it will go around a bend if you are not crazy out of control.
But each to the own.
As I said at the start, most people have a passion for their particular brand and won’t be easily swayed by what I or anyone else thinks.
Edit: I have to correct the red highlighted comment as I saw a photo today and went out and checked and I have in fact tried the new style P Zero, they are stored in my shed fitted to a set of rims I had on my last Ute, 255/35/20 fronts and 285/30/20 rears. I can't remember what they are like as I only used them for a few hundred Ks or so. Here's a photo of me using the fronts as a safety barrier while jacking the new Ute up.
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