Bigger Is Better... Why?

I don't know where you are getting your numbers, but I have never spent anything close to that, or known anyone to spend so much on tires. One of our friends bought OEM tires for a Trans Am RS6 and I think that broke a grand, but Tiburon costing more then a grand?!?!?! Maybe if you buy them at Bend me Over tires or something.

I don't know how to tell you this, but owning luxury cars and cars with weird tires sizes gets expensive at tire replacement time.

It cost my grandparents 700 to 800 to replace tires on their Jag in early 1990, it cost my great uncle over 1200 for tires every time he replaced them on his Mercedes S500, and in 1998 when my grandma had to replace the tires on her BMW 325i Convertible, it cost 1000 for four P6 tires.

Hell, my Dad spent over a grand on tires for a Lincoln Continental and 800 for tires on a Mystique.

When you live in small town USA with a tire shop that sells only Firestones and Bridgestones and you want Michlens, Pirellis, BF Goodrich, Toyo and premium Goodyears, you pay out the butt for them.

Good tires cost a lot of money. You guys are used to driving Corollas with 14" and 15" wheels and standard all season tires. When you drive expensive cars whose suspensions are designed around certain tires or in the case of my neighbors Jag, there is only 1 tire size that is made by only 1 company that fits your car without rubbing that will fit on your 19" rims, you have to buy them. You don't buy a BMW with P6 or a Jag with P5 on it and then replace them with Firestones if you want the car to ride and handle as intended, you just have to pony up the dough to keep your machine running right.

And yes, tires for a Tiburon did cost over a grand. A friend of mine had 3 of hers slashed. She got all four replaced and for that model year, Michlen made the tires for all Tiburons and they weren't a standard size that you could just find in any other tire. She wanted them to replace her stock tires with ones exactly like it and it cost her insurance over a grand to requisition the specially made Michlens.

Then tirerack is wrong as to what original equipment is, or your friend got screwed over big time.

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/OETireResult...icleSearch=true

Just to compare.... A car that is a much bigger performer then a Tiburon, the GTO tires, cost $131 each.

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/OETireResult...icleSearch=true

Even with delivery and install charges, it is still way shy of a grand.

My son is looking for tires for his car.

He spent the day driving to all the tire shops in town and got quotes.

The cheapest tire for his car is $70.00.

It's shame to think that it will costs over $300 for his car to change all four tires (including alignment, balance, etc.).

I payed $23.00 for a tire at the junkyard (looked brand new) and bought a matching one for about $110.00.

That's $133.00 for two tires, and it would be only $266 if I had done all four.

This year I may have to replace tires on my corolla. To replace the OEM 195/60R15s, they are about A$170 each (or about $120USD!). They are Dunlop Sport SP200E's.

... I think the most simplest I can put it is in a hypothetical situation such as this; Honda puts out an "updated" and "upgraded" Civic with an extra .5 inch of extra headroom, which is exactly .233 inches more than the current Corolla. Not to be outdone, Toyota adds an extra .5 inch of headroom to their "updated" and "upgraded" Corolla, which is exactly .367 inches more than the most recent Civic. Ford says "oh hell no!" and adds an extra whole 1 inch of headroom to the newest Focus. The cycle continues. Unfortunately, most people in the market for a new car don't really know or care to learn what the difference between basic things like RWD, FWD, or AWD. Then [car company] puts out a commercial saying, "[car company]'s [new car] came in 1st place and beat out [other car companies and cars] for most headroom in it's class!" A person looking for a new car sees the commercial, and heads to the dealership the next day to buy this car that has the most headroom in it's class, despite their being about 5'7" and perfectly comfortable in the cars with "lesser" headroom. And that's my theory...

I really hope the American consumers aren't actually buying this idiotic scheme. I was just noticing today while I was driving how much unneccesary headroom there is on my 8th gen Corolla. My car is 54.5 inches tall, which compared to most cars today is pretty short. I'll admit I've perminently set my front seats all the way back and leaning at about a 110-115° angle. (I like to relax when I drive). At my current seat setting, I could probably cut about 4-5 inches of headroom off and still have confortable space. Even with my seats set foward at a perfect 90° angle, there is still about 2 inches of unneccesary headroom. Personally I wish my Corolla was lower to the ground. I like shorter cars like the Lexus SC300/400 or the Mark IV Supra. Anyone ever seen a DeLorean in real life? That thing makes the Corvette look like a giant!

Thanks for replying Brendon; at least now I know my rant was not for naught I'm new to these forums so I apologize in advance if I type too much, blabber on, etc.

It's not just Americans buying into this scheme. Without going into too much detail, in Japan, I have 6 aunts, all married, all with children, and children who have children. I got to visit them a few months ago, and I got to see what kinds of cars they had.

Long story short, apparently, one of my aunts bought a Honda Stepvan... or Step-something... I forget exactly. She decided on the vehicle based, for the most part, on a single aesthetic quality of the van; the multi-purpose screen was nice/pretty/bigger than others she looked at. Now, the screen is primarily the navigation system's display, but when in reverse, it engages the rear camera. It also has a (in my opinion) practically useless TV that you can watch when the parking brake is engaged a few clicks. I say it's practically useless because, realistically, you can only watch it while running the engine (wasting fuel and possible risk of heating the catalytic converter to dangerous temperatures) or draining the battery while stationary. Not that I'd watch TV while driving, but I'd rather watch TV indoors, or failing that, on some sort of portable device. Anyway...

I have to admit, the screen was nice and well placed in the dashboard, but she said herself, that she could have saved upwards of 200,000 yen (roughly $2,000) by purchasing a different van she had her eye on. The other van had a voice-operated navigation system as well, saving the troubles of typing with a single hand on a touch-screen while driving. And typing in Japanese, especially names and whatnot, is a real pain because certain names can have a few different "spellings."

Anyway, I know I type more than I ever need to, so I'll stop typing about that for now.

As far as tires go, I'll admit, I only know the basics. One thing I've learned though (the hard way), you pretty much get what you pay for; the exception typically being dealerships. I could have gotten OEM tires at the time (on my '98 Corolla) for about $85 each ($340 total), but I went to this local tire shop and priced the same exact ones for about $40 each ($160 total).