New Tyres

I think that's what the Manta has at the back. Too much grip and too little power mean no fun!! MR2 is getting some new wheels this weekend, so the crappy tyres from that may have to go onto the back of the Manta :)

Hmm. I remember you slating my own choice of low rolling resistance tyres

NCT*3*s are slippery as f*ck. I had them on my 33 16v. I don't think NCT5s are designed to be low rolling resistance, either.

Before, hmmm, some very worn looking Michelins on the front and 'Roadstone Dark Horse' on the rear.

NCT5s were the WORST tyres I ever put on my S60. Rock hard, noisy, squealed all the time, made it understeer.

Front drive cars need grippy tyres to make them handle - Conti Sport Contact II, Michelin Primacy, Toyo T1-S, Conti Premium Contact II. All have worked fine for me.

A class came with NCT5s, they suit it quite well but a softer tyre would make the abysmal ride a shade less abysmal.

Which just goes to show that you can't really recommend a tyre to someone unless you have experience of that particular tyre on that particular car.

Yep. People often forget how much the handling of a car is influenced by the tyre.

And equal numbers who forget that there's a point at which you start to get such diminished returns on your extra spending that it's not worth doing. This is before considering just how much grip you *actually* need on UK roads.

(see above)

Something like a P6000 would be half the price, twice the life and 95% of the grip.

Don't get me wrong, grip = good, but sometimes you can have too much of it.

You can verify this with your experience of the Toyota MR2?

Eh? Run that by me again? If you mean the rule of diminishing returns, fair enough: but something ultra low rolling resistance has more than enough grip for most people, most of the time. But not everybody picks Michelin Energy tyres.

Tim isn't on about just grip, there are other considerations. Sure, we can consider noise, ride, longevity and rolling resistance. But it's also the way the tyre lets go of grip. Some tyres wail their protest at moderate cornering load and gradually seem to let go. Some are silent right until you skid, then they howl protest whilst you go sideways. Some seem to snap into a skid with very little warning.

Some tyres don't seem to work on certain cars, probably because of the way the car behaves or the weight of it. That's one of the problems with small cars on oversized wheels and ultra low profile tyres, presumably because the tyre is designed for something with another 100 kg of weight on each corner. That and people laughing at tiny stock brakes heh.

For a specific model, it's possible that the tyre is constructed in a different way. Have you looked in to the Lotus Elise tyres recently?

I'd take something that gives me notice of impending loss of full adhesion than something with 120% of the grip and 10% of the warning.

Well, no, it was an example.

My experience of Yokos is that they're *very* good.... but.... although they have a bit more outright grip than the P6000, they wear three times as quickly and do a nice line in suddenly letting go when pushing them.

See above - what I've found with super-sticky tyres is that there's no 'grey area' between grip and 'exit stage left, backwards'. Something with a bit less grip often provides more margin for error.

How can you have too much grip? Seems to me that it's more sensible to be running around with tyres appropriate for the driving style of the driver, and if that means choosing a hard wearing budget conscious leading brand product then so be it, but one cannot then go on about the superior handling of ones vehicle when it's running on flintstone style ecodonuts.

Brabus EV12 / CLS Rocket for example...

I didn't know Steve had been a passenger in an MR2...

See my other reply. Yokos wore out in less than 3k miles and were very hairy on cold / wet roads, they also didn't give as much feedback as I'd have liked on dry roads..... *huge* amounts of grip, but if you overstepped the mark, there was no gradual sliding, they just *went*.

P6000s work well on Wop stuff, generally, but I've been very surprised at how good NCT5s are - they wear well, have lots of grip (not quite as much as the P6000s, which were a bit behind Yokos).... but they do give you a fair bit of warning that things are going to go titsup. They're certainly better than the Michelins that were on it before (to be fair, I think they'd gone off, IYSWIM).

I dunno - I haven't seen any "Was in an MR2 (passenger)" posts from Steve recently :-D