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Story by Jack Baruth, photographs courtesy of Goodyear

Several years ago, I bought a Porsche 911 over the phone from a nice fellow whom I had met at a Mosport trackday. While this is usually a prescription for disaster, in this case the car was exactly as he described it, with one important exception. He’d told me it had “new tires”, and while this was technically correct, he failed to mention that they were new crap tires. I couldn’t understand it. As a semi-Nationals-caliber autocrosser and club racer, I’ve come to believe that tires are absolutely critical to a car’s performance.This is particularly true for rear-or-mid-engined Porsches, as those cars are notorious for abusive behavior on the back axle. Putting Cheapikomo (or whatever they were called) donuts on a 171-mph sportscar is like making Usain Bolt run the 100 in a set of pleather Kenneth Coles… assuming Usain would be at risk for hitting a Jersey barrier at triple digits if his soles disintegrated during the race.

Nevertheless, I decided that I would keep the Cheapikomos on there for a while, if only to save a buck or two. “How bad could they be?” I asked myself. Three months later, frustrated by the 911’s wayward behavior at speed and occasionally terrifying behavior at corner entry, I burned my credit card to the tune of nine hundred and fifty bucks for a set of Goodyear’s F1 GS-D3 “Max Performance” donuts. It was money well spent, and the fact that the 911 is capable of eating a set of them every eight thousand miles or so doesn’t change the fact that installing decent tires made the proverbial world of difference, both on the freeway and around a road course.

Most people understand that it’s sheer lunacy to put discount-brand tires on a Porsche – but what about on a BMW 325i? What about, say, a Honda Civic Si? The auto manufacturers’ headlong rush to put wide, low-profile tires on everything from Accords to Volvos has resulted in many drivers getting an unwelcome surprise when the time comes to replace their OEM rubber. It’s one thing to spend a thousand dollars or more on tires for a $75,000 coupe, quite another to face the same bill for a $19,500 compact sedan. Kumho and a few other tire makers have managed to provide a “halfway point” between super-cheap Chinese garbage and traditional high-performance tires like the Goodyear F1 or Michelin PS2, but none of them have really been worth getting excited about. The BF Goodrich g-Force Sport is a decent enough mid-priced tire, but it’s (indifferently) made in Malaysia and I’ve yet to buy one that was even close to being properly balanced.

There’s a pot of gold out there for the first manufacturer to make a decent $100ish tire, one that combines most of the performance virtues found in top-end products with a smidge of all-season ability. The new Eagle GT is Goodyear’s shot at the title – and although our driving time was limited, we’re cautiously optimistic that it might be a real winner.

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A few weeks ago, we had the chance to visit Goodyear’s world headquarters in Akron, OH to meet the new Eagle GT on its home turf. The press event started with a ride in the Goodyear blimp, and while some of our competitors have blogged about their rides in the blimp during this event, I am pleased to report that your humble correspondent was the only member of the press to actually fly the blimp! Yes, it took some convincing, and possibly a slight misrepresentation of my time spent as an “Airman First Class” in the Civil Air Patrol, but I am happy to report that the blimp is a real sweetheart to fly and that I was able to pilot it from above the BMX track in Akron back to the Wingfoot Lake hangar without incident. Having victoriously piloted an aircraft for which there are fewer active-rated pilots than there are for the Space Shuttle (it’s true), I was happy to redirect my attention at where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

The Eagle GT is aimed directly at the popular Kumho ASX, and a check of TireRack’s pricing shows that Goodyear’s pricing is reasonably aggressive. The rear tire size for a Porsche 993 – 255/40R17 – is $124 for the Eagle GT compared to $111 for the Ecsta. (To put it into perspective, the F1 GS-D3 in that size is $210, and the Michelin PS2 is $241.) The price difference across the relatively broad range of available sizes is rarely any more than ten percent, and occasionally, as with the fifteen-inch sizes, Goodyear matches Kumho dollar for dollar.

At those relatively modest prices, Goodyear offers a few advantages over the competition. To begin with, the Eagle GT is made in the United States. Not all Goodyear tires are hometown heroes – the GS-D3 comes from Germany, for example – but I was assured that in this case, all sizes of the Eagle GT will be manufactured right here in USia. Those of us who occasionally park by touch will appreciate the beefy “chine” which bulks out over the rim and protects it from light scrapes. It’s a sharp-looking tire, with a distinct performance-oriented look to its tread and shoulders, and it’s also specifically designed to be quiet at speed.

With tires, however, the proof is in the driving. For the press introduction, Goodyear did their best to provide an industry-standard type of tire test. Identical BMW 328i sedans shod with the old Eagle GT, the Kumho ASX, and the new GT were available for untimed runs around a relatively large autocross course featuring wet and dry sections. A selection of “youth-oriented” cars – a Civic Si, an S2000, and a Volkswagen R32 – were also available, but they were exclusively equipped with the new Eagle GT. As usual, the crowd of attending journalists was primarily notable for on-track ineptitude, but I was pleased to have a chance to compare notes (and run times) with one former Formula Atlantic driver, just to reconfirm my personal awesomeness.

With relatively low speeds and short lap times, it was impossible to evaluate the GT on critical areas such as heat management and high-load sidewall response, but in the confines of a mixed-condition autocross, the new Eagle is impressive. The dry grip is solid and transition behavior is consistent. My seat-of-the-pants impression is that the GT is not that far off the available grip of something like a Kumho MX in the dry, and it’s palpably superior in the wet. Deliberate attempts to unsettle the tire by entering the wet sections with a touch of understeer scrub didn’t faze the GT much, and wet grip was predictable enough to comfortably “drift” the tester Honda S2000 a bit around a long turn. Best of all, the GT has a fairly strong correlation between steering input and tire response, particularly compared to the Kumho ASX which was provided for comparison purposes. I’d estimate my times around the thirty-some-second course to be approximately 1.5 seconds faster with the Eagle over the ASX.

A dedicated street-tire-autocross product such as the Bridgestone RE-01R would have been probably another second and a half faster, but comparing the affordable, high-treadwear-rating Eagle to a specialized “max performance” tire is beyond the point. The Eagle GT doesn’t compete with the Michelin PS2; it competes with “Nexen” and other low-cost quasi-performance offerings, and it flat blows them away.

Drivers looking for a dual-purpose road/track tire would be well-advised to look higher up the Goodyear food chain, but the Eagle GT fulfills an important niche. It’s an affordable tire with respectable performance. Had my 911 come with a set of these Eagles, I’d have eventually moved to the F1 GS-D3 anyway, but I’d have worn the GTs out first. They’re good enough to put on a high-performance car, and that’s something which can’t truly be said about the other entries in the segment.

So there you have it. There’s no longer any excuse to put crap tires on your Porsche, Corvette, or even Civic Si. The Eagle GT is probably the best hundred-dollar tire in history, and it will be our default recommendation from now on when non-track-conscious drivers ask us about OEM replacements. In fact, this tire is so good at a hundred bucks that it makes us wonder what Goodyear could do for, say, three hundred dollars, in the way of a DOT-R competition tire. I hounded my Goodyear hosts relentlessly on this issue, and they didn’t respond in any fashion which could be characterized as “encouraging”, but I’ll continue to bug ‘em about it… and so should you. The next Goodyear Eagle should be an Asymmetric R-Comp – but until one appears, your parents, significant others, and hard-parking buddies will be more than satisfied with the GT.