LexSport

Coloured smoke not enough for Kumho it seems

There are many factors AFAIK, mostly trade-offs. The compound of the rubber can be soft to give good grip or hard to give longevity. The construction can have plenty of sidewall stiffness to give good handling or less so to give a more comfortable ride. The tread pattern can be designed to have minimum movement to give good handling, best water dispersal for wet weather performance or to make them quiet (drive at 30 with Yoko AO48's and you'll see how much difference it can make!) Price will be affected by the quality and quantity of materials used, demand, volume produced, etc. So, you could buy a small tyre with a hard compound rubber, soft construction made in it's millions to a "normal" design in the far east that will last for ever, but not necessarily give you much grip or feel. Alternatively, you could spend more on a soft compound, race carcass style tyre made in much smaller volume in a European or Japanese factory that has had much more spent on R&D to come up with an advanced design that'll go around the track several seconds quicker and give much more feedback.

As a slight aside to this question - the head of chassis engineering for a major car company posts to another forum I frequent and he has himself built a very rapid E36 M3 track car. He dislikes poly bushes for a number of reasons and attributes the majority of the benefits noticed by people to the fact their OEM bushes were shot and they could have achieved a similar benefit by fitting replacement OEM rubber bushes.

Cheers Tony

Google cache of Toyo US page as their website appears to be broken Tony, any chance you might be able to get some info out of Toyo as to when these will be available? I've heard dates from mid 08 through to the end of the year. A more "mainstream" version of the R888 apparently. I'm hoping "mainstream" means better in standing water, slightly harder wearing and cheaper.

I can't remember how it ended tbh. That was back in '06 I think. It was the UK D1 final at Silverstone so was supposed to be a drift... Perhaps he thought the agricultural background of the vehicle lent itself to gravel trap drifting.

:bigeyed: