Speaking of the FR-S... man, what an overrated car.

2013 Subaru BRZ vs 2012 Honda Civic Si HFP : Car Reviews

But more relevant to what you asked: Tires mean a lot. The grip they provide can impact acceleration, braking, and handling (and depending on the tire, can also impact ride). Tires are often a limiting factor with a lot of cars, especially when people buy cheap replacements.

Tires are very important. They are the only part of the car that makes contact with the road. The dunlops are great performance tires but just do not last for the price, and if you are looking for a dedicated track tire go R compound no questions asked and watch another 2 seconds get shaved.

Yup. What svt said. I used to see .5-1 second per mile for every "tier" of tire improvement on track.

So good street rubber, at the time Hankook, Michelin, Pirelli and Kumho were all contenders...would be about 1.5/2 seconds faster per lap.

Move to R-Compounds and you get another 1.5-2.

Move to Hoosier A6s and you'd get another 1-2 seconds...for about two laps before they melted.

Interestingly enough manufacturers spend a huge amount of time evaluating tires for a platform, it's a trade between cost (a huge issue for companies like Ford, GM etc) , performance (both ride and handling) and durability. In terms of tire evaluation from a mathematical modeling standpoint Tires present some huge issues for Engineers. The handling equations (typically based on work by Hans B. Pacejka - Magic Tire Formula and derivative works) are pretty good up to almost limit handling but then fail to consider ride, ride is then evaluated with other mathematical formulations and depending on what you want to achieve perhaps even techniques such as Finite Element Analysis (FEA) (computationally slow)…

Bottom line, they're really important and we don't know how to deal with them when at the limit especially when considering environmental factors (weather, road, pressure etc) which can vastly impact behavior and make them a real pain to understand!

Fun stuff but certainly they can make a huge difference…

Originally Posted by LongTrail

Interestingly enough manufacturers spend a huge amount of time evaluating tires for a platform, it's a trade between cost (a huge issue for companies like Ford, GM etc) , performance (both ride and handling) and durability. In terms of tire evaluation from a mathematical modeling standpoint Tires present some huge issues for Engineers. The handling equations (typically based on work by Hans B. Pacejka - Magic Tire Formula and derivative works) are pretty good up to almost limit handling but then fail to consider ride, ride is then evaluated with other mathematical formulations and depending on what you want to achieve perhaps even techniques such as Finite Element Analysis (FEA) (computationally slow)…

Bottom line, they're really important and we don't know how to deal with them when at the limit especially when considering environmental factors (weather, road, pressure etc) which can vastly impact behavior and make them a real pain to understand!

Fun stuff but certainly they can make a huge difference…

I'm assuming all that is dialed into some sort of surveyed range of typical consumer tolerances (noise, ride, tread life, grip), too? I mean its a rare car that has true performance tires from the factory. Even performance cars.

Ugh. There's nothing worse than tires that produce a lot of road noise.

Toyota really pulled a fast one on this. Pretty genius too!

I don't quite understand why the article says its not as fast as the Gen coupe and Miata in the beginning, then compare the new tires to FWD cars instead. But thinking in comparison to the the Miata and Gen coupe they're sitting there realizing:

If we want the car to be fast around the track, wider tires are better. This car isn't really faster than the competition, so we might as well just put Prius tires that we have on the shelf on the FRS to save cost. They're low rolling resistance narrow tires so we can get better mpg ratings. And then we know it's not actually that fast in reality, so we can just show everyone that it drives awesome like this!:



That's actually a pretty logical approach. It was risky posting lower times in magazine reviews, but it was the right choice. People who want track performance will change the tires anyway.


I do agree that the car is overrated. But I also agree that it's great. It is great that it is loads of fun for a small price. It has that James May philosophy that he prefers less extreme cars because he can drive it closer to its limit more often. It may not be going fast, but if I'm not trying to go all that fast anyway, then at least it feels amazing! And that's why many people will choose it over the Mustang V6 for the same price, despite the Mustang V6 having better numbers. The FRS just feels fun. Magazines love it because it is so EASY to drive. It seems very forgiving. You can drive reckless and be forgiven, so 1 day behind the wheel like a magazine reviewer, and you can walk away feeling like a rockstar.

EXACTLY. And really, that's the point of a fun/good car for the vast majority of folks. Miatas are very similar. They are very forgiving, but at the same time, they can teach you about bad driving habits very well. Forgiveness is part of that process.