I am considering Continental ContiExtremeContacts to replace my Toyo Proxes 4s this winter. The Toyos worked very well, but they wore out too quickly and have uber-weak sidewalls. The weird thing is that when I compare the Contis in 225/50/16 and 225/55/16, the tire with the shorter sidewall is actually 2 lbs heavier.

I've found that tire weight correlates at least fairly well to sidewall stiffness, so I would tend to think that the reason for the 55-series version being lighter would be that it has a softer sidewall. A sidewall that is both softer AND taller would be a deal breaker. On the other hand, weight is also very important to me, and if the compromise in sidewall stiffness is small then I would rather save the two pounds.

Opinions?

 

ContiExtremeContacts has softer sidewalls than Toyo Proxes 4. If you want stiff sidewalls and lightweight, go with Toyo T1-S, but those are $$$.

 

Yeah ^^^^

They do have a softer sidewall, I help mine out (235/45/17's) by running higher tire pressures. I can tell when they drop 2psi... They start to get really soft.

Overall winter tire... I love them.

 

You've got to be kidding me. I have a set of ContiExtremeContacts in 205/65/15 on my old wheels downstairs, which I JUST checked. At 29 psi, the sidewall feels significantly firmer than my Toyos' sidewalls do at 35 psi. Maybe 225/50/16 is just a bad size for the Toyos...

EDIT: Wow, that first post had issues. Fixing now...

 

I just got back from Tires Plus, where they had a ContiExtremeContact in 225/50/16 in the store. I can say with absolute certainty that its sidewall is significantly tougher than those of my Proxes 4s in the same size. They also happened to have a Proxes 4 in 245/50/16 that they had taken off another customer's car, and its sidewall was incredibly weak as well. It really seems that only the low profile Proxes 4s (45 and under) have decent sidewalls, and the rest are trash.

In any event, I'll probably end up with 225/50/16 ContiExtremeContacts in a few weeks. Anyone care to try to talk me out of it?

 

So you own a 4th gen right? The diameter is probably a little smaller than stock, but you'll be OK I think. Just make sure that the load rating is at least equal to stock or more.

 

I just got a set of four 225/50-16 Kumho ASX tires at Americas tire and I love them so far. I went with the 225 mainly because of the rims I have (Kosei K1 racing) are 7.5" wide so the 215/55-16 stock tire seemed way to narrow. The previous tire I had was the 215/55-16 Kumho KH11 and I loved them also but they did not last that long and boy they sucked in the cold weather. Two things I have noticed so far is that the wider tire seems to track better and they are quieter.

You can check tire sizes here:

http://www.miata.net/garage/tirecalc.html