My brother reckons on Colway for his old BMW which has fairly difficult to find 14" tyres. And being a semi-trailing arm one it's a bit tail happy in the wet. He's on his third set with no problems.
So I got a set for my SD1. Five for the price of two 'brands'. And they seem pretty good. Much more grip than the previous Avons - and much quieter. I have a favourite roundabout with lights half way round it and a sharp corner on the exit - but three lanes if you loose it, so fun late at night with no traffic around. And it will take that corner much faster than before without any squeal. Steering feel is better too - but that's probably just the unworn tread. Good in the wet too. I'm impressed...
That depends what you call motorsport. Colway are one of the few brands available in m+s tyres suitable for autograss, so they're very popular in that form of motorsport.
I tried a set on my Astra GTE about 20 years ago but can't remember the make. They had the same tread pattern as the Pirelli P6's it came with though. They were pretty good but required a shit load of weights to balance them and wore about about twice as quick so on balance the cost saving wasn't that great. Nowadays the state of the art tyres are so good I doubt if remoulds would be anything like so close in performance.
Most tyre tests rate Avons as crap though so I'm not surprised it isn't hard to equal or better them.
I had some on a trailer once and the tread was very very soft. Remoulds are old carcasses, with tread remoulded on top aren't they? Isn't that very similar to the whole "don't buy second hand tyres" arguments that have been going about?
I'll be interested to see how they last - the SD1 is generally quite kind on tyres, though. But if you assume improvements in modern tyres are better carcasses and rubber compounds there's no reason remoulds can't take advantage of those too. Although I'd accept with an older profile size tyre the carcases available ain't going to be to the best modern standards.
At the time I bought them they were about all I could find locally. And looking at the receipt, they cost over double the present cost of the Colways - some 5 years ago. I can't be sure how many miles they've managed as I've only recently got the speedo working again. ;-)
I think the leap in tyre performance in recent years is down to quite sophisticated things like the carcass, rubber compound and the tread pattern requirements being intimately related and matched, multi layer rubber compounds, assymetric tread patterns etc all of which have to work with each other. I doubt if the remould industry can duplicate these things or indeed control which carcasses it gets to put its new rubber on and how suitable these are for a given tread pattern or rubber compound.
In the past the remoulders just picked any popular tread pattern, the P6 was very common, and slapped a fairly cheap and basic soft compound on to try and match the grip of better state-of-the-art rubber at the expense of wear. It worked well enough within its limits. What I wouldn't want to do nowadays though is sacrifice the extraordinary cornering ability of my Focus, much of which is down to the tyres, for the sake of a few quid. Also I'm getting that grip, from Michelin Pilot Primacies on the front, without unduly short tyre life. The fronts were half worn when I got the car and 13k miles later still have about 3mm left. The rears (Firestones) hardly seem to be wearing at all. From memory the remoulds on my Astra lasted about 8k on the front and twice that on the back from new.
I also remember a very rainy trip up to Aberdeen on them when I was tippy toeing round fast sweepers on the A90 with a distinctly queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach unable to keep up with a little Fiesta 950 that appeared to be oblivious to the conditions. Any tyre will do you in the dry if you don't drive like a numpty but the difference in wet grip between good and bad rubber is huge.
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