BUYING GUIDE

Tire upgrading, also called plus-sizing, means replacing your original wheels with larger diameter wheels and correspondingly lower profile tires. Done correctly it improves handling through a shorter stiffer sidewall. Done incorrectly it wrecks your speedometer accuracy and ride quality. On Canadian roads there is a specific caution: a lower profile tire is much more vulnerable to pothole and frost heave damage.

If your car is high-performance, doesn’t it make sense to have tires that are just as high-performance? The main benefits of performance tires are higher speed* capability, improved handling and maximum dry road grip. (The negative is lower tread life.) But you need to know that all performance tires aren’t the same, which is why many high performance car owners own multiple sets of tires. (They often switch to all-season or winter tires in the fall and winter for improved winter grip.)

In Canada the seasonal tire decision is not just about comfort, it is about law in some provinces and about stopping distance everywhere. All-season tires handle moderate conditions but they are not winter tires, and in Quebec they are not legal between December 1 and March 15. Winter tires should go on when temperatures consistently approach 7°C and come off when they are consistently above it.