banjo

I agree....This summer tire thing must be a sales gimmick....I have been driving for years and never heard of this.....Winter tires yes.. but summer ...never heard it...

jkt

Thanks for the info......looks like I have more work to do.....still looking for a good summer tire...any suggestions?

tromly

Look at Cooper and Yokohama, have tried both, got 35K miles on each.

Dave_S.

Ultra High Performance tires are often referred to as "summer tires" because they are like driving on slicks when it comes to snow. Often they don't handle too great in heavy rain either. They are made with super soft, stick rubber compounds and they have minimal tread depth so they do grip like crazy on dry pavement, but wear unbelievably fast.

A friend of mine bought a set of UHP tires for his Porsche 911 and even with easy street driving they wore out in 3,000 miles. He only did that once. When I bought my Boxster S it had some UHP tires on it and I could actually see the wear on the tires increase every time I drove it.

JKT: Even though I store my Boxster in the winter, and for the most part don't even drive it in the rain, I run all-season tires with a much higher treadwear rating. I run Bridgestone Potenza RE960AS on that car. They are very sporty and to me they seem to grip very well. So far I'm happy with them and would buy them again. I don't know if they come in a size that will work for the RX, but like I said earlier, the RX isn't exactly a high performance sports car anyway.

jfelbab

If you have your mind made up on summer tires here is another option or two to think about.

Have you consider Plus sizing? This is where you would replace your 235/55-18 tires with 255/50-18. You would need to check fitment and offset but this would open up a larger number of performance category tires to you. The circumference of these tires will remain roughly the same so there would be little speedo or odo error. Pay attention to the load rating and don't go below 99.

Another option would be to replace your wheels along with tires. This allows you to put 19" up to 23" wheels and very low profile tires on the RX. 255/40-20 looks particularly good on the RX. Again, you would need to have a pro examine fitment and offsets before moving down this path. You might well need/want to modify your spring & strut package to deal with this properly but others have done this. This route does get expensive.

One last comment on summer tires. As a group, they are a noisy bunch of skins and esthetically are not quite a good match for a Luxury vehicle.

Have you looked at the tirerack.com website?

Here is a tire fitment site that should help.
http://www.rims-n-tires.com/info_specs.jsp

If I were to buy new tires for my RX tomorrow I'd buy either the Bridgestone Alenzas or the Yokohama Parada Spec-X.

jkt

Thanks for all the great info! Looking at the General Exclaim. uhp ..seems to have very good reviews and a modest price to boot! Any experience with this tire is welcomed.

cylonwarer

Just put on Yokahama YK520's on mine today. Discount Tire sells them. Definitely a quieter and smoother ride that my GY Eagles. Haven't got to put many miles on them yet though.

Boognish

I agree with this statement 100%. The RX is a very heavy vehicle with a high center of gravity. While it's got plenty enough power, the transmission is geared for smoothness and fuel economy, not sportiness. If I was to invest money in anything on this vehicle to help it perform better the very first thing I'd do is replace the brakes with larger calipers and rotors. The stock brakes are barely adequate for mountain driving, imho.

3 season tires don't all wear that quickly. I got about 15-18k miles on my Yokohama AVS tires that the Subaru wore in the summer time. If those tires were only lasting 3k on your Porsche, me thinks they were DOT legal competition tires designed specifically for autocross or driving to and from track days. Which is most certainly a hoot!