Do you know which company made the oil filter in your car? What about the seats or the windscreen? Unless you recently changed any of these parts yourself, it’s likely that you don’t. And why would you?
They make little material difference. You might know that the eight-speed automatic gearbox comes from ZF, but there’s not much you can do to change that even if you really wanted to.
But you might know whether you have Goodyears or Pirellis. Now, I’m sure the average motorist couldn’t care less whether the pieces of overpriced rubber on which their car sits say Sailun or Lanvigator on the side, but the car enthusiast may well have made the conscious decision not to opt for a Comforser and instead spent a bit more on a Michelin or four, and not just the normal Pilot Sport 4, but the 4S.
Tyres have a reputation for being unsexy, but I believe they are among the most interesting parts of a car. They are the only thing that connects your car to the road, and therefore they influence almost every aspect of its behaviour. Grip, of course, but also ride comfort, noise, fuel economy, and how fast it can accelerate and stop.
When my oil filter needs replacing, the garage will fit whatever brand they tend to use. It works or it doesn’t, and unless it’s so bad that the engine seizes up soon after, I won’t know the difference. But when my tyres are up for replacement, it’s an opportunity for me to play at being a development engineer. Never mind settling for some Kustone or Saferich ditchfinders; I have the chance here to make a meaningful difference to the way my car drives. Off to read every tyre test on the internet I go.
Tyre testing requires a lot of resources and specialist expertise to do well, so it’s best left to the specialists — and I find reading and watching their evaluations strangely magnetic. How can the same BMW 3 Series be safe but a bit numb and understeery on the Michelin, fun and slightly oversteery on the Pirelli, and a hopeless, unpredictable mess on the Hifly?
Thing is, most automotive engineers don’t fully understand either. Even Tesla and BYD, the champions of doing it all themselves, fit tyres from known brands. On performance cars in particular, the tyres will be specific to that OEM or even a particular model, and the P Zero on a BMW M3 will have little in common with the ostensibly identical P Zero on an Alpina B3.
Engineers from the tyre company will often be involved with the development process of the car from the start, in order to tune the tyre to what the OEM wants, whether that’s ultimate fuel consumption, perfect handling or, most likely, a trade-off between the two, skewed slightly in one direction or the other depending on the new model’s positioning.
It works this way because tyre development is a very specialised discipline. The ways the natural and synthetic rubber work together with various additives such as silica and carbon, as well as the more rigid carcass, are less like normal mechanical automotive engineering and more closely aligned with alchemy. That air of mysticism, combined with how tyres are a relatively easy way to make a big difference to your own car, makes them fascinating things. It almost makes me feel guilty when I’m turning them into smoke by way of an 819bhp V12. Almost…
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