Lancia Ypsilon 1.4 16V Tires

Very good small car tires allowing for spirited driving with a wide safety margin. I got them with the car and didn’t give them a deeper thought throughout the 40.000 km they lasted, being convinced all decent brand low profile tires should perform like that nowadays. So I thought… until I replaced them with a set of newly introduced Continental EcoContact 6. I never thought the gap in the level of grip through the bends and general feel of the car would be so huge. Knowing that I would surely buy them again, unfortunately they don’t make them anymore. In general, getting UHP 16" tires is getting more and more difficult these days, it’s aging SportContact 3, equally dated Pilot Sport 3 and that’s about it.

Excellent tires for spritely driving in a moderately powerful sub-compact car. The dry handling 'wears out' over time a bit quicker than the thread. After 5 or 6 years of going like glued to the tarmac, with still plenty of thread left, they started to gradually lose a bit of that grip, probably due to rubber aging. I wish they would feel a bit quieter inside, especially at A-roads speeds at which you still hear more rolling noise than engine and wind noise, but I guess that's the price you pay for such performance at a relatively attractive price.