Best Tires for the Volkswagen Golf Mk3 1.8

Being a kean driver I invested in a full suspension kit for my Dragon Green Golf Mk3 to sit closer to the road and improve my cornering abilities, With the Dub lowered 60 mm front and 40mm rear it looked the buisness.

I had purchased the Car in 2007 August and it had a new set of budget tires already fitted Wahnli branded to Pass it's MOT.

The Car was fine for feedback and feel but the tires seem to run out of grip before the suspension did, leaning to quickly onto the sidewall and following B road potholes horribly, the first 8000 miles were not too bad. The wet weather performance I thought at the time was reasonable.

Looking for a Change, I discussed various tires with my local Tire dealer , with abundance of tire knowledge and feedback from their customers, Alpha Tires in Fenton, Stoke adviced me towards the Uniroyals.

So the Uniroyal Rainsport 2 was choosen after much contemplation between the Toyo T1R Proxies and The Goodyear Eagle F1's .

1500 miles in , the handling has transformed, Wet weather grip is amazing , you really have to drive it in the rain to realise how good these are in the wet.

General feel changed, noticable reduction in understeer dramatically changed the perception of how much spped you are actually carrying into corners, as it has a much stronger sidewall. The dry grip is brilliant.

I'm just enjoying these tires , in whatever weather. A little warm up of the tire gets these babies more sticky and braking has improved aswell, again wet or dry you feel on the road, not waiting to drop off.

My car came fitted with a new set of Michelin Energy E3a's when I bought it second hand. The fronts lasted approx 30,000 miles and the rears nearly 40,000 before needing replacing (with approx 2 mm tread depth left). For a car like mine (standard Mk3 Golf) these tires are more than good enough. The grip in the dry allows the door handles to scrape the road before progressively breaking away. The tires are not the limiting factor for making good progress (more the lack of power, poor brakes and barge-like handling!). In the wet, grip is obviously compromised. However, the tires still provide sufficient feed back to warn you when they are going to give up, and even when they do this happens progressively. I did have one scary moment aquaplaning in torrential rain on the A303 but think this was not the fault of the tire but more the shear quantity of standing water combined with slightly excessive speed for the conditions. The car in front of me also was going sideways.

On balance, when it came to replace my tires I chose the same again as I was impressed with the wear rate and minimal road noise combined with adequate grip. In my opinion they are well suited to the car.