Good that you brought that up.
Wearability and durability are tested and the tires are rated for such.
Wearability has very little to do with how well a tire will perform and
when it does it's in a reverse correlary. Softer tires stick better but
wear faster.
Actually most tires that perform "best" (best grip wet/dry, etc.) wear
very quickly and as such have a very low rating for wear. My daily
driver has $250.00 Dunlop SP9000's on it (Jaguar with 245/45/18) and
the $35.00 Kuhmos probably have a better wear rating.
Many Healeys are only driven a little bit each year. Hardly enough to
really get to the wornout stage before the tire is too old to be driven
safely.
About "top of the line" tires: why would most people buy them? Most
drivers will never know the difference anyway. You can rarely drive
them to the limits of what they are designed to do other than last a
long time (mileage wise). After time they are all bad anyway, worn or
not.
In my case I drive good tires with high speed ratings and lower/stiffer
(195/60) sidewalls on Minilites for fun, and while showing the car with
its factory disk wheels it wears the 165/SR15's. they aren't getting
that much use and they don'
t look like stock bias plies anyway so why spend more?
YMMV,
Rick
San Diego
On Oct 22, 2004, at 5:02 PM, tom felts wrote:
> That just begs the question----Why would anyone ever buy a top of the
> line
> tire if they "all pass the same tests". Isn't wearability/durability a
> factor? Curious minds want to know!:)
Check out the new British Cars Forum:
http://www.team.net/the-local/tiki-view_forum.php?forumId=8
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