Best Tires for the Porsche 944

Alot of teams in the US runs these tires purely for wear resistence. Alot of teams will run these about 4-5 weekends whcih consists of fri. practice amongst 4 drivers, sat 8 hrs, sun 8 hrs of racing. These tires get abused !!! Ran these on 2002 BMW 330 and 1989 Porsche 944. On the 944 I would THRASH these tires I mean it. Just abuse them. When my 2 hours stint was done, id get out and look at the tires, very little to no wear. These tires will LAST !!! Although toa point. They heat cycle out after about the 4th race weekend. I will also say that they are not great in the ran. Ran a really older set in the rain at Watkins glen and I was super sketched. Also ran a newer set and they just were not that great. a GREAT endurance ran tire we use is the COnti extreme contact. TOOONS of corner grip which inspires confidence while dancing around competitiors. With all that said, Its a great tire, tons of grip, thrash the hell out of them and get half a dozen Race days. Would recommed, just get a dedicated rain tire for the wet days.

These tires were firtted to my car when I bought it and had little or no wear. Recently did a 750+ mile round trip from end Of Essex to end of Cornwall meeting a wide variety of road conditions. Never had a moments concern be the road wet or dry. I drive the car as it was meant to be driven so no gentle cruising around. The tires were a bit noisy on ridged concrete, the section of the M25 aound the junction with the A3 and on towards the M3 was the worst.

Did 20.000kms on them and they still have plenty of 1000's of miles to go! Very good in dry...the size of the tires was bdaly chosen since it gave a very 'baloony' drive to my Porsche 944. However they wear brilliantly since they were subject to a lot of grippy conrnering! In the wet they were poor...although a 944 RWD will never be great in the wet but the tires could grip better I thought. For the price I believe they are very good value for money!

After installing these tires on my 944, it felt like a new car.
No more road noise and great grip.

How the P6000 can be considered a high performance tire is beyond me. These things appear to be made of Bacolite rather than rubber - I sewar you can see a crystalline twinking in the tread in sunlight.

They are hopeless in the dry and hopeless in the wet and a fantastic way to take a performance car and make it broadly comparable with a Korean shopping trolley in ability. They must be outright dangerous on mid or rear engined vehicles.

On the upside they last for ever, but unless you only care about owning a performance vehicle rather than driving one then steer well clear.

I have been running my 944 as a daily car for the last 5 years. Firstly with Dunlop SP9000s which were excellent, then Pirreli P6000s which were less progressive and had poor feedback. Then I got a set of second hand 17" alloys which were fitted with Conti WinterContacts. Frankly these winter tires were better than the Bridgestones RE050 that I have now.

In the dry the Bridgestones grip well, but give no feedback and are not progressive. When it rains I just end up aquaplaning everywhere, and when it snows I get stuck!

The Conti WinterContacts had surprising high grip in the dry and were progressive so you could actualy slide around and have some fun. They lasted longer, and were obviously far superior in bad weather.

As soon as it is dry I am going to kill what is left of the Bridgestones on a circuit :-) and probably go back to the Contis.

I have owned 4 Porsche 944/968's (still have an '89 944 and a '95 968) plus BMW 5 and Mercedes E sedans. I've driven over 500,000 miles in these cars and had experiences with many different tires. My first 944 had Pirelli's on it and I hated those. Good dry handling but dangerous when wet, and they wore out really fast. I used Michelin Pilots on the sedans and was happy with them, but not at all for the sports cars (once was enough there...Pilots are not performance tires). I tried Kumho's and was happy but not elated, and then my friend at Big O tires recommended Yokohama AS430's. That was years ago and I've been using them since. I recently purchased a 1995 968 that's got Michelin Pilots on them. I don't need new tires yet, but I'm going in today to "upgrade" to the Yokohama's. The Michelins are loud, almost impossible to balance (could be mildly flat spotted, but we can't find them) and tracks poorly on uneven roads. I don't race at all, so for every day driving the Yokohama's are as close to perfect as one can expect. (Ps: My first set of AS430's were replaced after 7 years and over 50,000 miles only because they were getting too old and becoming brittle from being parked outside in the sun. The treads still looked at about 60% left).

Put a set of these on my car to replace some very disappointing Kumho KH15s and they have transformed my car!

The level of grip they offer is fantastic. With the Kumhos there was horrible understeer and no warning about losing grip - with the Goodyears the situation is totally resolved.

Plenty of grip, good warning about what is happening with the car and impeccable road manners - the perfect match to my 944.

It just goes to prove that you get what you pay for and quality shows!

I put a set of these onto my 944S on the recommendation of the team at my local (not a national chain) tire supplier; they told me that one of their team was a grass-roots racer and that he was delighted about these tires.

I trusted their opinion and bought 4...

Disasterous! My car suddenly had understeer, where before it was beautifully neutral. There was no warning about the rear end breaking away and precious little feel when trying to get it back again. The performance in the wet was even worse and made my car frankly terrifying.

I've been driving for 20 years & have never experienced tires affecting the performance of a car like these Kumho's did - I was shocked to say the least.

I approached the shop that had recommended them and after much discussion they agreed to upgrade to a better tire, charging me only for the diffeence in price. I would like to say that this was great service but they whinged continuously and tried to make me feel like a bad person for not thinking the Kumho's were wondeful - to cap it all they didn't balance the wheels properly and I had to pay to get it rectified elsewhere - I'm not going to 'name and shame' because that's not fair, but suffice to say they've lost a customer for life...

I've just read that the all weather version of this tire the KH16 has just become OE on all new Ford Focuses - all I can say is good luck because these things stink...

I wouldn't use these tires again...

New Pirelli P6000's were fitted to my car when I bought it - they're coming off as soon as I can find replacements. Dry grip is OK, but I've had better and the car felt nervous. Wet grip is atrocious. Almost no progression at all, car just snapped away as I pushed into bends - wouldn't recommend P6000 for spirited driving - they bite back!. Wear rate seems good and quite quiet on motorways. Not a tire for me though!