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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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