THE BIG DIFFERENCEWITH SMALLWHEELS
This is not exactly a newsflash. I’ve mentioned it before, myself. But, goodness, don’t small wheels make such a positive impact on the driving experience? Due to worn tyres on my 17s, I recently switched my 987 Cayman S back to 18-inch wheels. The 18s had been sitting in storage clothed with nearly-new tyres for over three years. May as well get some value out of the tyres, I thought, before sheer age means they have to be ditched. After all, they can’t be as bad as I remembered, right?
Except they were. The ride is more brittle. You can feel the dampers struggling to cope as the combined mass of the wheels and tyres thumps up and down. Meanwhile, what you can’t feel is nearly as much feedback from the road. It’s much harder to get that sense of being anywhere near the limit of grip on public roads, too. The 18s have much wider tyres and the grip levels are far too high.
Happily, a friend was selling off a set of rather nice 17-inch wheels at a price I pretended to myself I could refuse. After a few weeks, the Croc was back on 17s and the chassis sweetness was back. Every time I make the switch, it really drives home the advantages of small wheels.
It also makes me wonder what some relatively recent Porsche would be like with much smaller wheels. How about a 997 GT3 on 18s with, I dunno, 255 section instead of 305 section rear tyres? If that sounds crazy, back in the day the Italians sold 400hp supercars on 215-section rears. And that’s 215-section tyres based on really basic technology compared to today’s tread compounds. Sure, for track days, lots of grip is fun. But the thought of a more interactive GT3 for road driving sure seems exciting to me.