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Re: The Classing Picture As A Whole

To: <autox@autox.team.net>
Subject: Re: The Classing Picture As A Whole
From: William Loring <bloring@tirerack.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 11:30:35 -0600
> From: "Alex Dresko" <adresko@3pointoh.com>
> 
> If you're in a stock class, your car should remain STOCK! If you have to get
> new tires, that are in any way, shape, or form better than the oem tires,
> you move up a class. You can, however, get new tires with the same size, and
> ratings as the OEM tires and still remain in teh stock class, thus fixing
> the RE71 issue.
> 

If you're proposing that we use the UTQG (traction temperature and
treadwear) ratings to say which tires would be allowed on a particular car
as "stock", then I would point out that each tire manufacturer is
responsible for setting it's own UTQG ratings. They cannot be accurately
compared across tire manufacturers.

Perhaps you could say that the tire must be the same size and speed rating,
but that still does not take "all-season" or "summer" or other tire types
into consideration.

While I don't have any big problem with the "stock is stock" concept, it
gets pretty sticky when trying to apply it to tires. (sorry) I would imagine
there are other areas where this is a problem too...

It seems to me that we're assuming that all cars of a particular
make/model/year/trim level are created equal. They most definitely are not.
Every car off the assembly line varies from one to the next, and
manufacturers make (sometimes undocumented, or at least poorly documented)
running changes in parts and specs all the time.

What's my point? Uh, I dunno. I guess it's that I don't think the "stock is
stock" idea will be any simpler to work with or enforce than our current
system. In fact, it could be quite a bit tougher to keep track of all the
data for each "stock" car. Is the system really that badly broken now?

Best regards,

William Loring




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