Engineering Explained uses the BRZ to demonstrate the Top 5 Mods for a car

[Norinradd]

I live in one of the wettest places on the planet. Coastal british columbia. Car is daily. Had on stock tires for 2 years. I drive the poop out of this car. Rain or shine. Never once had a scary experience. Yah it kicks on corners easily but the trac cntrl steps in within what seems like 10 degrees of slip.

The stock tires are great. If you want more grip go with pss. Now im running pilot sport ats 3's. The pss all season tire. Tire rack rates them one of best tires for rain. They are working amazingly. We had 170 mm of precipitation so far in january.

[soulreapersteve]

Originally Posted by Dark

I have my Re71R equipped WRX go sliding at 85degree. Any tire will break loose if you want it to.

I'm riding shotgun next time we hit up autocross. Want to see you slide your WRX.

[softgrip]

Originally Posted by why?

What you are admitting to is not being familiar with the car or rear wheel drive. Many of us are not really familiar with it either, the only other rear wheel vehicles I've driven were a conversion van and an 84 Caddy.

As was mentioned above, the tires are perfect for people who are not familiar with either, because you can break loose and not die or crash. Usually higher grip tires are not as easy to slide around on, when they break free things usually end up very very bad.

I've spun and written off a car on the stocks

I had an 82 Corolla that didn't slip as much at low speed, and that was a terrible car! It slipped way more in the wet and the suspension sucked, but it was solid at low speeds in the dry.

As I said - I've upgraded my wheels and tyres, and it's night and day. The car is better for it.

[Ganthrithor]

Originally Posted by Brayden_23

Think it's kind of funny to see that the people who are complaining about wet handling are in California who flip out any time they see any sort of precipitation.

I mean, Californians are objectively useless at rain driving (it's comically pathetic), but I've driven plenty of different RWD cars on wet roads (including my same BRZ with MPSS), and all I'm saying is that I've never driven any car/tyre combination that was as slippery when wet as the BRZ on 2/3's used-up Primacies. I love to go out and slide around on the handful of days each year when it rains, and the car was very easy to slide, but it honestly felt like it was bordering on hazardously slippery. I felt like a hazard to others because you couldn't even brake effectively in a straight line. It honestly felt similar to driving on snow with Blizzaks.

[Mim]

Perhaps their wet weather performance is not as incredible as other performance oriented tires, but I have not had any issues with their grip.

I greatly love the stock tires as I think they have made me a better driver. That moment when you're taking a long sweeping corner and you're balancing the throttle at close to the limit of adhesion and ease more throttle in as you smoothly unwind the steering and jet out of the turn is magical.

Now most will say er... but yea you know you can do it with better tires too right? Agree, but that's at much higher speeds!

Mind you I am riding on Tein coil-overs, have some bracing and neg camber, which has helped improve traction by a decent margin. Having experienced what I have, I'd be more inclined to advise people, that are looking to do suspension and bracing, to swap to better tires after and not prior to their new suspension.

Having driven since new on stock I feel I have a greater understanding and appreciation of each performance mod I have done along the way.

Ultimately it comes down to typical weather conditions, road quality and speed limits in your part of the world, but as a DD focused build driving in mostly 50kph and 60kph zones I think the stock tires (for me) would be much more fun than something with a great deal more grip.

[Dark]

Originally Posted by soulreapersteve

I'm riding shotgun next time we hit up autocross. Want to see you slide your WRX.

Last time you weren't there, I spun my WRX. And yeah sure, come riding along.