John Simister
This month, a sticky issue – replacement rubber for your classic.
Tyres. A ticking time bomb, on two counts. Once past a decade old, they should really be replaced. Actually, the tyre industry suggests five years, but on a classic stored in a dark garage they should last longer than that. So, with what new tyres do you replace them?
It’s entirely possible that you won’t have a choice or, if you do, that the choice includes some very expensive rubberware. It’s all about supply and demand. Some favoured classics are well catered for but others, notably at the modest end of the scale and likely to be owned by less-affluent enthusiasts, are facing a tyre famine. The irony is that some of these cars were once among the most popular on our roads.
If you own a classic Jaguar, MG, Alfa Romeo, Porsche or anything else with a wealthy ownership profile, you can of course benefit from the classicspecific tyres available. There are re-makes of the Pirelli Cinturato, the original Dunlop SP Sport, and various Michelins including the asymmetric XAS. They are wonderful, but they are expensive; of these, the Cinturatos are the best value.
There is also the Vredestein Sprint Classic, retro-looking if not actually a visual reproduction of something older, and significantly cheaper than the others I’ve just mentioned. They work very well, too. I have them on my Saab 96 and a friend has them on his Alfa Giulietta Sprint.
But if you have anything with, say, a 155 R12 (Imps, Vivas, Fiat 850s, Escort Mkis, BMC 1100s), a 145 R13 (Spridgets and more) or 155 R13 (many mainstream family cars), all you can get is a modern-looking tyre, most likely Chinese, or – in the case of the 155 R13 – the option of a very expensive, perhaps unnecessarily exotic Michelin XAS. And how long will these modern, but retrosized, tyres from China continue to be available?
A case of supply and demand
Demand cannot be high enough to keep a big tyre company happy at the low prices charged, and there’s little evidence that the companies value the classic market. To take the example of the 155 R12, the size fitted to my Stiletto: the most widely available tyre in that size is a Chinese Nankang, an entirely serviceable tyre. But nowhere on the Nankang website is it even mentioned.
One way around the problem, of course, is to abandon the original wheel size and fit something larger, able to take a mainstream modern tyre of lower profile. A 165/65 R13, for example, has the same rolling radius as a 155 R12 and is widely available. That’s fine if you don’t mind modifying your car, but it will be harsher to drive and, besides, people have become a lot keener on originality than they used to be.
A while ago, after a conversation with Dougal Cawley at Longstone Tyres, I posted a question on the Imp Club forum: would club members like to see Cinturatos available in 155 R12, and would they buy them, even if they cost £100 each or more? A few people were very keen, as I would be, but more common were the views that modern tyres would do, helped by their low cost, or that many people were using 13in wheels so there was no point. What, I wonder, would those members say if asked the question in five or 10 years’ time? Will modern 155 R12 tyres become unavailable even as the quest for originality gathers pace? Here, then, is a plea to those who are making classic-looking tyres in classic sizes. Don’t forget the practical, affordable classics out there, whose rubber is under threat. Pirelli, Michelin and Dunlop have done a grand job in reviving some of their old designs, while Vredestein is in the vanguard of affordability. So come on, chaps. Let’s have some more sizes so we can keep our classics properly shod into the future.