Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum and a new owner of an old Porsche (944). One of the first things I noticed when I bought the car, which came with 215/60R15 tires, was that there weren't any decent performance tires available. I had to upgrade to 16" or 17" to find anything, as many people do. And yet there are a lot of lightweight 15" Fuchs wheels floating around that could be put to good use with a decent set of tires...

I'm in a good position to do something about this problem. I work for Nexen tire overseeing product development, and while that might not be your tire of choice, we have a good track day tire in our SUR4G, and are coming out with an SUR5G (N'Fera Sport R) which TireRack just tested privately against the Bridgestone RE-71R and loved.

I can't make any guarantees, but if there are sizes out there like 215/60R15 that don't have any other performance tires available, I'm willing to try and persuade my company to add that size. There are enough old Porsches out there that I might be able to get this through.

So my question to you, the Porsche enthusiast populous, what tire size(s) do you need that you can't get?

 

I recently read that finding the 15" size for my 944 was going to be difficult. I went online and I think the only thing I could find that I would go for were Sumitomo's (Falken had them too?) and they were not cheap. Then one day I stopped into the Costco Tire shop and asked the guy about it. He said they did not have a problem with that size, and quoted me for Michelin's, Bridgestone's and BF Goodrich's. A few weeks later I took a 3 hr, drive to a friend's place and came outside the next day and had a flat. I then noticed that tread had separated from the inner part of the tire, they were real old, so time to get some new ones. Went to the Costco in his town, had to order, but they came the next day and just then they had a deal on BFG Radial T/A's. Balance, mounted and installed I think was just a bit over $500. My size is the same as yours above. The Sumitomo's would have been almost double that price.

 

Well, judging by the number of responses, the problem isn't as big as I imagined. I guess most people have already upgraded their wheels on their classic Porsches to find tire solutions.

There are plenty of 215/60R15 all-season tires out there, and they'll be fine for a country drive, but they'll be rubbish on a track day. As far as I know, there is only one high performance summer tire...the Pirelli P600, for $330/each! This is the Porsche recommended tire, but I won't be paying that. I upgraded my 944 to 16" so I could put some proper UHP summer tires on it.

 

There are plenty of desired tire sizes, this sub forum just doesn't get a lot of traffic.

Most Porsche sizes for 15" and 16" are hard to come by, especially if have staggered sizes. You'll get a lot more responses on the G-body 911 fora.

205/55/16, 225/50/16, 245/45/16, 165/70/15, 185/70/15, 225/50/15, 285/40/15, etc.

Of course some of those are in greater demand than others. The last two I think are for the 15x9 and 15x11 from the RS/R.