Given
72%
while driving a
BMW 330d
(255/40 R17)
on
mostly motorways
for 13,200
average miles
Due to the odd/rare size of the rear tyres fitted to my car (a 2010 330d), their was only a choice of 2 decent tyres, these and the even older Goodyear Asymmetric 2s.
Compared to the A2's I had before the PS4 is a revelation in the wet, the grip in the wet was absolutely staggering (above 7C, below which any summer tyre will increasingly struggle), it felt like it almost matched the A2s grip in the dry! Truly amazing grip in the wet!
Grip in the dry seemed good too, although I never pushed them cornering.
A big downside though was the rate they wore at, I nearly got caught out hitting the legal wear limit (1.6mm), I usually change tyres at 2.5mm.
Although this was partly due to my mileage shooting up that year (due to a job change), it was also down to how quickly the tyres were wearing, from new to ~1.6mm (for the NSR, OSR was ~2.7mm) in about 13.2 k miles. Whereas the last set of GY A2s lasted ~18.6k (rears again).
Their is the mitigating circumstance that I found the rear tracking was out shortly after replacing them, by how much I don't know because the garage's printer wasn't working and they didn't bother to take a photo of it either! That said, it was tracking straight and the outer and inner edges and groves had worn similarly, although the rear was tramlining somewhat (which reduced quite a bit after having it tracked).
Also it seems that the factory pressures are too high for the rears making them wear more in the middle, see their final tread depths below (for each main groove) and make your own mind up. But certainly the A2s pumped up to the same pressures and likely the rear tracking had been a bit out for years as the rear tramlining issue (mainly on the concrete bit of the south part of the M25!) had also been around for years!
NSR 3.2, 2.4, 1.6, 2.7
OSR 3.5, 2.7, 2.7, 3.5
Since then I've fitted Goodyear Asymmetric 6s (I had to downsize slightly to 245/40 17 to get them), and actually their not faring much better :(, they've covered 12.6k miles and are down to 3mm in the ctr grooves already (I can't recall what the outer's were, but theirs a smaller difference than the PS4s, which is at least partly down to the slightly lower pressure I use now, 2.5 Bar vs 2.7, not to mention the tracking being done at the beginning of their life).
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