I'm going to ask you a direct question my guess is you won't answer. Do you accept that "45 series tires" can have widely different sidewall heights depending on the tire's width? Yes or no.

 

Since poor quality body work was mentioned as a potential source of rust, I will say that my AE86 was pretty clean when I bought it in 1994, but it did have a section on the right rear quarter panel that was repaired poorly and the bondo had rust behind it. This created a star like blemish and it always bothered me. I had the car repainted in 2001 and the guy who repainted it was a car industry connection of my brother’s. We became friends. He is Filipino and I only mention that because many of the enthusiasts and owners of older Toyotas here in SoCal are Filipinos. Joe also happened to really love AE86s, so he put a lot of work into this bondo issue and had me go to his shop to inspect the body work before painting the car. I said it was fine. He ended up cutting the bondo section out completely and welding in a new panel. All these years later, it looks great and I am very grateful for all of the hours he put into it. I plan to get it back on the road soon.

 

here's a nice quick visual:



despite being a '45 profile' tire there's actually a thicker sidewall than the 60 profile once it becomes wide enough

idk how common a 305/45-20 is lol but yes just saying 45 is worse than 60 alone doesn't tell the full story

 

On cars, you'll generally see 305's on the back of high performance cars that need grip to launch. Much more common width on pickup trucks.

I don't have any complaints about the 245/45/19's on my 540i.

 

Your guess is wrong. Of course they can. The 45-number itself is a ratio of sidewall height to tire width....the wider the width, the greater the height. That's why I did not include all 45s in the list of those I wasn't impressed with. But, outside of a couple of Hyundai/Genesis and older BMW models, I have not found very many whose ride quality I liked.

 

What year is your 540i? I agree (and I made that statement in a previous posts) that older-generation BMWs had a superb combination of ride/handling, even with low-profile 45s and, in one case, 35s. But not all automakers can design a chassis/suspension like BMW once did.

 

2017, first year of the G30 generation which was just replaced by the G60 generation last year.

 

Oh come on lol, plenty of smooth 6s out there. I've owned several cars with silky V6s. But I agree, they're not V8s.

 

the 3MZ gets my vote for smoothest V6, except its got V8 torque down low but only 4 cylinder power up top haha

 

Those were insannnnelllly smooth engines. Haven't had enough experience with one to comment on the power, power delivery etc. But it aced the Lexus test, you couldn't hear or feel anything.

Plenty of BMW I6s out there that are smooth as silk also, don't forget.

Honda/Acura had great V6s. So did Nissan at one time. We had an old Mazda 626 V6 that was silky smooth but had no guts.

But fundamentally I agree with you, V8 is what I want and yes they're better.

 

Ive honestly never been impressed, I-6s are about what I can tolerate....but I'm cursed since I had never even once in my life felt a 6/4 cyl as my family never had anything smaller than a 4.7 V8 and most were/are larger than 5.0

Now I've moved on to 12s as my "normal" to the point it's thrown me off when I switch down to one of the V8s as to why the engine feels shaky lol!

 

I was going to downsize from 245/40R18 to 225/50R17. But finding even used wheels from a junkyard was proving to be way too expensive. Way more than I want to spend.

Plus I’d have to deal with the headache of selling the old wheels.

 

Sure, I get it. You're used to what you're used to.

V8s weren't in virtually everything at one time for nothing.

 

i'm 'cursed' in that regard too lol... my first car was the LS, passed down from the grandparents who owned it from new so it was a fairly well kept example too... now even normally 'good' cars are effectively ruined for me! 80% of peak torque not available from 1500 rpm? pass!! i would however take 0 torque until 4500 rpm and then all of a sudden massive torque lol

 

Thank you. So per your own admission lumping together tires simply by aspect ratio as you always do makes no sense.