Marketing is one of the biggest tasks carried out by the staff of an automaker. Some marketing campaigns have been so good that not only did the automaker rake in tons of cash, but the marketing campaigns themselves are remembered for decades. Thankfully, automakers aren’t crazy enough to try our readers’ joke slogans.
The Autopian’s Publisher, Matt Hardigree, had an unfavorable experience with his Subaru, but he appears to be in the minority, as other Subaru owners can’t get enough. Reader ‘I don’t hate manual transmissions‘ starts a conversation by openly wondering if Matt’s experience was in-part because he gets to test so many different cars for a living, including Subaru’s competitors. V10omous responds:
“We’re OK, as long as you don’t try our competitors” is certainly a slogan they could try.
Doughnaut:
“We’re the best car you’ve tried… so far.”
Tbird:
“You think you hate it now, but wait ’till you drive it.”
Here’s one of the references:
Jason wrote about what AI on Temu seems to think a motorcycle looks like. Now, bad AI is nothing new, but NewBalanceExtraWide points out something hilarious:
The thing that blows my mind is that now that AI is churning out a truly astounding amount of slop onto the internet, it’s going to start referencing its own garbage and get even worse. It’s an ouroboros of absurd garbage that’s just going get fatter and fatter with straight basura.
Thomas wrote about how the new Nissan Leaf is actually a pretty decent deal. But Alexk98 has a bone to pick with EVs and their big wheels:
Dear Automakers: Let us option the smallest wheels on the highest trim EVs. The range penalty on these high trims is almost always just because they want to Donk the fancy ones. More sidewall on smaller diameter wheels gets you more range AND better ride quality with cheaper tires, which EVs can chew up more quickly than ICE cars.
Have a great evening, everyone!
Have you driven a Ford lately? You don’t know what your missing. There ad campaign from the 80’s. now days it’s have you driven a Ford lately, did you miss the last recall notice……….sad
I’d like to see an engineering breakdown of this, if it is indeed true. I’m no physicist or engineer or mathematician, but it seems a diameter is a diameter, whether the metal wheel part is half the diameter or 90%.
I would imagine it has less to do with the overall diameter of the tire, and more from the increase in width that comes with having a lower profile tire.
Weight has something to do with it. Big rims with same overall diameter usually weigh more (air in tire vs metal in rim) and therefore are harder spin up decreasing efficiency.
Eh, not so much, since with an EV you recapture the power spent to spin up big wheels or accelerate large masses when decelerating. Aero is the bigger factor, not only are larger diameter wheels often wider, but alloy wheels also usually have larger openings and more surface depth than the base steelies with covers, or even also with covers that aren’t as cool or stylish as the larger fancier wheels. More open area and more wheel depth increase the churning of air that occurs as they spin, and the amount of air that can move in and out of the wheel well through them, all increasing aero drag even if they were the same width as smaller wheels
As the other commenters mentioned, the larger wheel package generally means wider tires, which increases drag, and they weigh more. I would think, too, that OEMs might even build them extra heavy as the reduced sidewalls and greater diameter would take more abuse with bumps and have to resist more flex in turns. A stiffer ride causing the suspension to do more work probably incurs some energy penalty, as well, but I would think that’s something that couldn’t realistically be measured.
It’s the aero penalty that goes along with having bigger openings on the wheels, more prominent spokes, and more surface depth… All things that improve the looks of a wheel and are desirable for up-market trims also increase the churning of air as the wheel spins, hurting drag even if they are the same width. Increase the width and the penalty is even greater
I agree, but that’s more of a design choice than an inherent fault, though. A larger wheel could be designed for a cleaner surface (even if they rarely are because they’re sold largely on looks), but it would still weigh more and the tires are usually wider to make up for the lack of air volume with the shorter sidewalls and probably to go along with the general belief that bigger wheel=better handling.
I used to have friend who primarily sold Fords, occasionally worked across the street in the Lincoln-Mercury showroom, he joked that he would sometimes tell customers that the Grand Marquis was the “last car they’d ever buy” and wait to see if they picked up on anything
Our Prologue lease is the base trim which “only” has the 19″ rims which actually have some meat to them. Which was funny when the dealer tried to upsell us on protection packages they pushed the wheel and tire package as “those 20″ rims are really expensive and a bad pothole can break them” so 1 you don’t know what rims we got and 2, people out there cracking Honda rims every week? Pass.
I drove the LT and RS EVquinoxs, with the 19s and 21s, respectively.
The 21s, on top of being far too thin for not-at-all sporty crossover were run-flats as well. They were a ton louder and you could feel every pebble in the asphalt. I assume the Blazer and Prologue are the same.
I could see the big rims on the SS, but the RS chevy crossovers are trying waaaaaay too hard to be cool
Regarding AI model collapse, I’ll just leave this here.
Sam Altman Places Gun To Head After New GPT Claims Dogs Are Crustaceans For 60th Time – The Onion
The problem is that I can’t read the Onion or a lot of other satire anymore because at times so many real headlines and stories these days read as yesterday’s satire. Meanwhile, today’s satire no longer bites as hard because the real world is so ridiculous.
I wish I liked larger wheels, but I just put some low-end Pirellis on my old Passat for under $500 (out the door, mounted, and warrantied) which was very refreshing. 55-series, IIRC. A great blend of comfort and daily driver performance.
Comparable tires for our van in 17″, around $750. 65-series with chonky sidewalls. They do flex under hard cornering, but the chassis and suspension will scream at you before the tires.
My BIL’s 20″ Model 3 Performance? Around $1,800. Those aren’t fully apples-to-apples comparisons (he got Pilot Sports), but I still think that no mainstream, middle market vehicle should have anything over 18″ for sheer practicality and cost reasons. It can blow up in a manufacturer’s face when buyers get stuck with an unexpected tire replacement bill that’s a lot higher than expected — they’ll internalize it and treat it like an unnecessary repair, which IMO hurts repeat sales. Of course, I’m not in charge, but as people keep cars for longer periods of time, it’s something to consider.
Just a recommendation, not a mandate. For mandates, I think full-size spare tires with a matching rim should be required 🙂
I’ll happily take the heat re: big wheels.
The biggest wheel option available on any model is almost always the best wheel option, with very few exceptions. This is purely from a looks standpoint, so I won’t entertain any efficiency, cost, comfort, or practicality counterpoints.
The reason for this is that the designers of the car will have always designed around the biggest wheel they were planning on offering. Budget models/trims are then downsized and look utterly stupid because the design didn’t have the smaller diameter in mind.
For the same reason, fitting larger wheels than the largest factory option is equally stupid.
I covered all this a while ago for the insurance company. The studio knows which wheels work best out of the range, even though all are given equal consideration. I didn’t work on the latest L460 Range Rover but on the base wheel (19” I think) it was a case of ‘hide that when Gerry comes around’.
Yes, the worst offender that I have seen recently is the Blazer EV. The LT model comes with 19in wheels but because of the size of the car, it looks like is riding with 15in wheels. The 21in wheels size fit much better.
Even discounting the important reasons for smaller wheels, I’ve seen some cars where the wheels have gotten so large that they look cartoony. Off hand, Porsche 911s have gotten there on some (all?) of their trims. I think they need to bring back white letter (or whatever color) tires for the visual effect of larger wheels without the downsides.
Random question for the comentariat:
What wheel size and tire size would you consider “optimal” and why?
Personal take is: for more of a sports car I think you should start with the size of the brakes or the brakes you think you’ll eventually need, then find the smallest wheel that fits around it within reason, and roughly 40-45 aspect ratio tires seem the best balance overall. Tire width really really depends on the cars characteristics and how to get the most out of the good ones without sacrificing too much on the bad ones.
This is more or less what I did with my car. OEM 16s won’t actually clear the calipers on my trim (it comes with 18s, but I got a free set of OEM 16s), unless you get lucky with balancing, and they won’t even go on the studs if I were to add a BBK. The only reason my 16s fit on the front of my car is that one didn’t require any weights to balance and the other only took one on the inside edge of the wheel. The shop intentionally marked those as my fronts so they’d clear. Those are my 205/55/R16 winter tires on a 6.5-inch wide wheel.
I’m running 245/45/R18s on a 9-inch wide wheel for a bit softer of a ride right now. Eventually when I do a BBK and coilovers these will get 215/45/R18 Pirellis or maybe the Michelin CrossClimate 3 Sports when the US gets them. I’d like to go back to using my HUD instead of a GPS speedometer. Current tires have it off by about 5 mph and at 75 it’s actually doing 80.
I like the wider summer tires for grip when it’s warm and narrower winter tires for more ground pressure for snow and ice.
19″ is nice for brakes, but 17″ is fine.
Judged by gt350 tearing up roads
For a true sports car, I’m not compromising.
40-45 series tires seems like the worst of both worlds, not all out performance but not enough ride quality improvement to be worth the sacrifice.
Give me 30 or 35 series for sports cars, 50-55 for passenger vehicles/CUVs, and 70+ for trucks.
Generally 18-20″ wheels make the most sense to me for the kinds of vehicles I like. Bigger starts looking silly, even on large SUVs, and smaller looks cheap.
Tell me more about why 30/35’s are better… I haven’t done back to back comparisons for over 5 years, but this was on a 225 width tire on a car that weighed 2200Lb and we tried every ratio between 30 and 50. Lower than 40 and the car seemed too skittish over any bump or imperfection and any higher it just seemed to wallow around in corners. I’m assuming that you mainly deal with tires that are closer to 300 width than 200, so is it more the total sidewall height than ratio as a 225/40 has less sidewall than a 305/30?
Yeah I think you hit on it right here.
My Cadillac rides pretty nicely with 275/35/19 and 305/30/19 so I just wouldn’t see any value in going with more sidewall.
But with a 225, anything below 40 is pretty damn thin, so I get it.
13 inches at the low end, 16 or 17 inches at the high end, no larger
For a sports car:18’s are THE size. go to a track day and you will see a very high number of 18s on all four corners of car there. A good 18 in rim can fit over basically the largest brakes any car needs (outside something as heavy as a Hummer EV if it tries to hit the track). I do suspect that bigger brakes are needed for things like the Taycan or other large EVs as they need to stop all that weight, but even then, maybe 19s.
For a smaller, normal car, 16s or maybe 17s. same for midsize SUVs, maybe 17s-18s. for trucks and large SUVs, 17s-18s again, nothing is gained from going bigger there for the most part.
30 profile for sports cars, 40-45 for sporty dailys, 50-55 for basically everything else.
Designers, do your job and design the car with 18s running 50 profile tires and stop hiding behind this notion that only 24 in rims can look “correct”.
I personally want a bit more sidewall for heat capacity and just as another tuning option. Ride is bonus. One issue for 35s nowadays is the time you can drive the crap out of something is limited by how fast the front tires will heat soak.
I’m in an extra fun spot with the factory setup in that the brakes are so huge (410/390mm rotors) that there’s really limited room up front in terms of clearance. Wheels flex under load. I was wondering when it would happen, but I did end up with a small barrel score already from what I assume was a pebble temporarily lodged between the caliper and the barrel of the wheel. What’s crazy is those wheels are already extremely low draft. I don’t envy the tire guys.
If you care about heat soak, try out the Hankook Ventus RS4 and for 98% the performance at 60% the cost Federal RS-595Pro tires. They won’t have great grip during the first lap, but won’t fall off even after 12 hours of hard racing. I should throw in the caveat that I’ve only run these on cars weighing between 2200Lb and 3400Lb so they may deteriorate faster on heavier cars.
Neither manufacturer makes tires that fit modern RS Porsches.
Theoretically Federal could if I replaced the entire braking system to put on smaller wheels, but… then you’re offsetting the cost of tires with the cost of replacing the entire braking system (plus wheels) on an RS Porsche. Or I want something “that fits”, I’m making other significant non-free compromises.
I’ve known folks who have run the Hankooks on some extremely serious stuff, and the reality is the Pirellis and Michelins have noticeably more usable grip. The Hankooks win on price only. Even then, new wheels/brakes.
For my situation, it feels like stepping over gold bars to pick up nickels. Though for more normal stuff, sure, Hankooks are value for money.
Well, if you can’t earn a COTD, you might as well inspire a few. (And they were good ones! My hat’s off to you guys.)
You’re at the top of the pyramid, so you get the credit for everything that comes after.
Thanks, but gotta respectfully disagree on this one. Matt never did answer my question, and last I saw nobody even clicked the like button on my post. The responses, however, were brilliant.