Years of evolution have removed a lot of instinctive behavior from human beings, but there is one impulse that hasn't been drummed out of us over the eons. No, we're not talking about our hooter fixation. We mean adding hoops, shoes, rollers, or, well, wheels and tires to your ride. It's the first thing on your to-do list when you buy a car, isn't it? It's an urge that's just too powerful to ignore.
Have you ever asked yourself why? What drives us to remove perfectly functional rims and rubber from a car and drop hundreds-if not thousands-of dollars to replace them? The look, obviously. There isn't a single bolt-on in the automotive world that can personalize a car faster than a new set of wheels and tires. But the beauty of new rims and rubber goes way beyond the aesthetic. Slap on the right set and you'll see huge gains in your car's performance without making any other changes. Carve corners like you're on rails! Launch from stoplights like Kirstie Alley on her way to a Hometown Buffet! All of that, and more, can be yours with the right choice.
Improved safety is also a bonus. Not to kill your buzz, but safety should be as important as style and performance. Consider this: A tire's contact patch-the amount of rubber on the road at any given time-is only about as big as your palm. Or look at it this way: The total contact patch area of your four tires is about the size of an 81/21/4x11 sheet of paper. That's all there is on the ground to control your ton-and-a-half car, with you and your loved ones inside, as it hurtles down the road. Don't you want to make sure that small amount of rubber is as good as it can be?
Tire Types
The tires that apply to our kinds of cars fall into three broad categories: mass market, high-performance, and ultra-high-performance. How a tire is classified depends on its design parameters and how it balances certain trade-offs.
Tires are one area where you really can't have it all. A tire designed to grab like GI Joe with a kung fu grip is going to wear out quickly. Likewise, a tire designed for hardcore cornering will give your car a stiff ride-we'll go into why later. So you should choose a class of tire with the traits you want, while understanding that those traits will have consequences.
Mass-market tires are the kind of tires that the factories put on low-end coupes and sedans. Also called all-season tires, these are designed for ride comfort and long tread wear, so they aren't going to stick or corner very well.
On the other end of the spectrum are ultra-high-performance tires. These are built to withstand extreme top speeds (149-mph plus) and provide quick, responsive handling, usually at the expense of tread life and ride comfort. But for the ultra-high-performance buyer, tread life and comfort don't mean squat compared to the feeling of sticking like glue to a twisting mountain road. As you'd probably guess, ultra-high-performance tires are pricey. All that road-grabbing technology is expensive, and you can expect to pay between $100 and $200 per tire or more for this level of performance.