I know that I appear to be the 'expert' on tyres on this forum, and as a consequence of that I tend to find myself commenting on just about every tyre thread that gets posted on here. I'm aware that sometimes I take a basic level of knowledge as a given when replying to questions or making a point, however not everyone has that understanding of why I keep banging on about tyres and so I thought it might be a good idea to actually try and explain myself and my reasons in a separate thread.
First off, I'll start with the caveat that I have no qualifications in tyre production, or chemical engineering, or any professional racing experience at all. Everything I say from this point on is simply a mixture of my understanding along with my own experiences. If you wish to disagree with me or correct on any point then by all means do, but at least give a reason for it: In turn, I'll try to do the same. If all I achieve with this post is to make just one person stop and think before they order a set of ditchfinders, then that's good enough for me.
WHY TYRES SHOULD BE EXPENSIVE
A tyre is a consumable, nothing more and nothing less. They come with the car when we buy it, they get used as we drive it, and they get replaced about once a year. Viewed in that sense, they are no more important to your car than brake pads or wiper blades. That said, I'd argue that brake pads are pretty vital to driving as they stop the car, and wiper blades tend to be invaluable when trying to see out of the windscreen when it's raining! What I'm getting at here is that although they are just a consumable, they are also a key part in the everyday operation of a car, be it on road or on track.
The perfect tyre should do and have many things: Low road noise, be comfortable, low wear rate, good grip in all conditions, communicative, and be well priced. Sadly there's not many tyres out there that can do all of these things at once, so we always tend to find the compromise and inevitably the first thing to be compromised is the cost. This is even more true in the current financial climate where every penny counts, and yet I'd argue it should be the last thing to be considered.
As is often said, tyres are the only thing keeping your car in contact with the road, and so that's what you're relying on to get you around safely. If you actually look at the exact contact patch of the tyre to the road you'll see it's scarily small, which makes tyre choice even more important. Manufacturers of cars and tyres alike spend millions year upon year trying to make the small differences to give a car the edge, whether that's in terms of comfort for the luxo-barges to shaving tenths of laptimes for the trackday specials. To put it into numbers I'm going to pick off the top of my head, so say spending an extra £30 per tyre could be the difference between a manufacturer who spent £1M on tyre development and one who spent £10M.
I've pinched the following numbers from the Camskill site today (20-1-12) to give an idea of this:
225/45/18
RE050A - £157.20
VUS - £130.80
452 - £99.95
Chosen deliberately on the grounds that these are probably the most popular tyres for the Zed. Almost £30 between them, and a world apart in terms of quality, and again you're looking between a budget manufacturer (Falken), one that spends a hell of a lot in design but is still relatively unknown (Vredestein), and one of if not the largest tyre maker in the world today (Bridgestone). I don't have access to their accounts, but I'm fairly confident on saying that the R&D budget of Falken is dwarfed by Vredestein, and their one is tiny compared with Bridgestone. You probably see where I was going now with the price difference between tyres and R&D working in terms of percentages. I wouldn't want a tyre that had £4.23 and a couple of rubber bands used in its design.
WHY A GOOD TYRE IS A SAFE TYRE
I've briefly touched on this on my Mixed Tyres thread, but it's worth mentioning here too. Ignoring any factors about tread design or grooves vs vees, in simple matters a tyre with a good compound will be a tyre that will stop quicker, grip harder and last longer than a poorer rival. Add back in the tread type and you then have a tyre that disperses water well too, so we're left with a tyre that stops and handles in both wet and dry conditions. You know in QuikFit et al where they put those signs on the wall that say how a worn tyre can take twice as long to stop you as a new one? Well they're right, but you can get the same difference between a good tyre and bad tyre. If you have a look through various tyre tests that the press do (EVO magazine is an easy one to find, however I take their results with a pinch of salt given their huge advertorials these days) you'll see the difference between various tyres, and between the top premium ones and the bottom budget ones the stopping distance can be twice as much. Scary when you go pace out an extra 20m of stopping distance and realise how far into the car in front you could end up.
Moving away from braking distances, there's also the issue of grip to consider from a safety point of view. Sadly the muppet to decent driver ratio is increasing on the roads, and there are more and more times where you need to avoid someone else being an idiot. In times like that would you really want to find yourself running out grip because you saved a few quid per corner? It's a rhetorical question, but one worth thinking over.
BETTER TYRE = MORE FUN
Well, it doesn't always as in the right situation a shagged set of cheapo tyres can be far more fun than a set with too much grip (I'm thinking wet airfield on a drifting day), but for the most part none of us bought a Zed because we drive like Miss Daisy. We drive performance cars because we like performance, and part of that comes with the promise of fast speed.
A good experiment is to find your favourite wide roundabout and go round it normally, then go round it 5mph faster, and then 5mph faster again (conditions allowing, of course!). Even 5mph makes an incredible change to your perception of what is fast, and if you were offered the chance of an extra 50bhp for £120 I'm pretty sure you'd snatch someone's arm off. Cornering speed is the extra bhp equivalent when it comes to those of us that prefer the twisties to straight line stuff, and as much as it would be fantastic to be able to find a tyre that gives you improved grip at a lower price, I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. Sure, you could settle for a set of four budget tyres and still enjoy the Zed, and indeed you would, but you'd also be removing something that makes the car so very special.
Referring back to the above section on safety and braking distances, you also have to remember that a tyre that shortens that distance means you can brake later before the corner, and then because you'll have more grip you can then accelerate faster too. I suspect that a good tyre will shave a fair bit off a 0-60 time, if that's what floats your boat.
BETTER TYRE = MORE CONTROL
This is where it gets very personal and every one will have a different opinion on what makes a tyre 'feel' good. For me, it's one that lets me know exactly what is happening between rubber and road, regardless of whether I'm crawling through town or holding a 15deg slip angle. Normally a tyre with good grip will have good communication as you need one to be able to rely on the other, however some of the most communicative tyres I've ever used haven't actually had that high a grip. The ones that spring to mind are the Vredestein Ultrac Sessanta (on a 350Z) and the Yokohama Advan Neova (on an S1 Elise). The best way I can describe how good these two tyres are at letting you know what is going on underneath is to imagine there's a bloke in the passenger seat beside you, telling you in no uncertain terms whether the road surface is starting to get a little worn, or the camber is changing by half a degree, or if the rear offside tyre is down by 1psi compared to the rest. You may ultimately not end up going as fast as a tyre with more grip, but you'll have so much fun you may not care.
If you can get that communication from a tyre then you can really start to explore the limits of the car, and when pushing on that's when you can really get a sense of oneness with your car.
WHY CHEAP TYRES ARE A FALSE ECONOMY
Of course, it would be churlish of me not to mention the cost of tyres here. To take it to extremes, a set of four Falken 452s would set you back £425.90 but a set of Michelin Pilot Super Sports would be £842.80. Give or take that's twice as much, and that's a lot of money. It's about five tanks of fuel, or a track day at Silverstone GP, or a years RFL, or an extra £1.16 a day if you really want to break it down. That said, I suspect that people who are considering the F452s probably aren't going to be considering the PSS anyway, so it's a slight unfair comparison. How about comparing 452s to VUS? £579.80 for the VUS, or a difference of just £155. That's about 700 miles worth of fuel, or an extra 42p a day. Sorry, but when we're talking about the running costs of a £30K sports car then that's peanuts, it really is. For your extra cash you get a tyre that is much better in both wet and dry grip, and a light year ahead in terms of communication, and it also happens to look pretty good too!
Even if you stick to the top end, so comparing RE050A with PSS, £692.80 plays £842.80, or the same £150. Again, we're talking about a tyre that really is very good (I run them on the 911) compared with one that is out of this world. More grip, more feel, and they will last longer too. Suddenly that £150 really doesn't seem a huge amount, not in terms of what you get back if you do spend it. A better quality tyre will usually have a harder compound anyway, so by spending that bit extra you usually will get more miles out of it anyway.
Just for a giggle, I priced up the cheapest set of tyres too. AutoGrip F107s, £236.40. Almost half the price of the 452s then, so you're actually better off going super-cheapy if you want to save a few quid. I jest of course, as clearly no-one in their right mind would put those on a performance car as they'll be awful, but if you're trying to justify spending less then why not take a 50% saving over a 36% one? Of course, you'd end up in a ditch after 30m, but hey, at least you've saved the cash, right?!
What I'm trying to get across here is that there's more to tyres than just the price versus how quick you can go. There's a lot more to it than that, and without hitting the science I hope I've covered most of it here. I didn't touch on ride comfort or road noise too much as unfortunately these tend not to go hand in hand with performance tyres due to the lower profile, but generally the better the tyre the less the noise. If there's a demand for it I could always do a follow up piece later if people want.
I hope that's put my opinion across without sounding too preachy or over-dramatic: At the end of the day, I'm just a car nut like the rest of you and I don't want to be lectured either, but I also don't mind admitting when there's gaps in my knowledge where I can learn more. Next time either myself or anyone says that you're better off buying X tyre over Y tyre despite costing more, have a read through this and decide for yourself after taking all the facts into consideration and you could end up with a car that gives you that little bit wider grin on your face, which the Zed is already top of its class at.
