Gumshoes: Five Sticky Summer Performance Tires Tested

From the August 2017 issue

You’ve likely heard the timeless wisdom that tires are the most important component on your car. It’s true. Assuming your car is equipped with functioning braking and steering systems, plus seatbelts and a powertrain to propel it, that is. Indeed, assuming your car is in fact a car and not a cardboard box with a paper-plate steering wheel, tires are critical.

To help inform this most important purchase, we assembled five grippy sets of rubber from the max-performance class of summer tires, ranging from $153 to $198 per tire in our 245/40R-18 test size. It’s possible to buy stickier stuff, but the tires collected here exist in the sweet spot for street-performance tires, with excellent dry grip, impressive wet-weather performance, and expected tread life of 20,000 to 30,000 miles. It’s no coincidence that tires from this class are factory fitments on Porsches, BMW M cars, and Corvettes. The engineers that developed your car devoted months—possibly even years—of their lives to selecting the original-equipment tires. But performance is merely one element on a list of priorities that also includes optimizing for cost and weather conditions that may not exist where you live. If you’re looking to boost your car’s performance with a set of sticky summer rubber, this is where you start.