Tyre question

Depends. Some cars and tyre combinations are horrid. I've had mixed tyres on the back end of my car before, and it's caused silly amounts of lift off oversteer on wet roundabouts. It'd have been dangerous if I hadn't known how to correct the slide. I always try and have matching tyres on the same axle, and all round if possible. OTOH, the Nankangs might not be that bad, and offer a similar enough level of grip to the Pirellis to not bother things too much. Get an empty wet roundabout and find out is the best answer. I think an S40 has traction control and all the other electronic gubbins, so you may not actually end up sideways, just have rather lower cornering limits.

Thanks - I was thinking of keeping it as the spare, but as the tyre man says the spare is a smaller size. The Nankang still cost me £45 so it presume it's not total rubbish. There should be ample opportunity for wet testing at present....

The message from marcb contains these words:

Now there's an interesting thought, price as an indicator of value.

What I've heard of Nankangs is that they're pretty soft and grip well, but wear fairly quickly.

I was a bit skint last year and had to put a pair of 225/60/15 V Nankangs on the rear of my E34 520iTourer. I am still pretty impressed by the grip in wet or dry conditions. I've only got it unstuck once in the 15k or so they've been on there and that was in an emergency evasive action and it was a bit of an interesting experience; scary but very controllable. I'm nor sure I'd put them on the front wheels though. Wear has been excellent so far, though this is *not* a sporty motor despite having about 170bhp as standard.

JB

Hello,

I would prefer to have matching makes of tyres. I had a bad experience with a Masterfit garage when I got a car and they fitted a crap one to the front. All it did on right turns was slide in the wet. It made the car unstable even at low speeds so I had it changed and kept that as a spare. I don't fling the car about and tend to drive slower in rain, but that was a horrible experience. With two matching tyres it is a lot better. I have cheap tyres and they were £65 each! Nearly died. For a car like yours you might be looking at £85+ each for decent ones. Forget budget tyres on a performance car.

Cheap tyres that cost £65 each? Where on earth are you buying them? Michelins for my car are < £50 if you get them from the right place, though admittedly they're not a wide or low profile tyre. You can get Michelins in