The width of the tires is not the only thing that has changed. Because a taller tire will have a larger front to back footprint then a shorter tire the overall footprint of a narrower tire would be the same so the psi would be the same. Your comparison has problems.
This is getting really away from what I originally said and proved. Skinnier tires are better for tracking through snow. That’s been proven in real world testing. Most of the country don’t need tires that are dedicated to strictly driving in snow conditions for months on end. Even in the Northeast. Only places like Mountain regions or Central NY and Upper Michigan that gets a lot of lake effect snow. Any good decent all-season tire for most of the country is fine and wide or skinny won’t make any real difference. Skinnier tires (everything else being equal) are a smaller footprint and thus more lbs per square inch. That’s a FACT.
As a personal note…Here in NH I’ll take a good winter tire (no matter what the width) over a skinny summer tires. But where I grew up…I’ll buy the skinniest winter tire that is still safe for my vehicle. Try spending a winter there on wider tires. I’ll make a wager you’ll see more snow in one month in areas like Central NY then you’ve probably seen in your entire life.
Allow me to contribute another “fly in the ointment” in the tire discussion… we need to get to 165 posts at least…
The fly is “XL” rated tires. Two identical tires brands, models and sizes can be available in standard load ratings as well as XL, or Extra Load.
The 285/40/18 Michelin Pilot Sport 4 tires on my Mustang carry an XL rating. I don’t need an XL tire but that is how it came. There was a small degradation in ride quality because of this.
Searching for tires for our Audi… 255/40/18… brought up a slew of XL tires for a car that does not call for them. We did end up with XL Michelins. The ride quality was very similar to the non-XL Audi spec Continentals they replaced. Michelins, in my experience, ride a bit better than other brands.
My guess for all these XL tires is the popularity of performance SUVs using these large sizes. Big, heavy, powerful SUVs. So we fat tire sedan drivers must just accept a small ride penalty.
Those are commonly called TLAs (i.e. Three Letter Acronyms)
Hey, I’ve done work for NASA (OMG another acronym!) and if you think people are bad today, they have been the poster child for acronyms for many decades. They applied a 9 letter acronym to our product. In fact, once in a meeting with them I joked- I just figured out what NASA stands for! Numbers, Acronyms and Special Abbreviations Reading one of their specs leaves you wanting to buy a vowel…
I physically measured images of tire contact patches posted on a tire study site. And unless one was plus-plus-PLUS-sizing their tires, the contact patch of the wider tire varied less in size(1-2 square inches greater) than it did in orientation.
As I’ve said before: I’m not advocating for a return to 80-series tires on 13" rims - for me, 60-series is low profile enough.
And again, the feel of higher profile tires to me is more intuitive when driving.
That Priority ad claims that taller sidewalls “ruin the looks” for some drivers? Boo hoo! We saw plenty of sidewall fifty years ago, except at places like Indianapolis, and we never thought about it.
When I worked on STIS (Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph) we were tasked with retrofitting a shutter. I came up with the name Intermittent Light Interruption Device (ILID). We were all quite happy with this, then the mercurial program manager of Hubble Servicing Missions went on a tirade, as he often did. We decide that we wouldn’t poke the bear and didn’t institute the new name.
BTW, how would you like to say or even worse, write Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph every time you referred to it? No wonder acronyms are so popular.
My neighbor and his son used to listen to the music the father liked as a young man, like AC/DC. Whenever they played that CDs his youngest daughter, about 4 at the time, would jump up and down on her bed and sing along.
Well, math & physics be damned - I go with the feel, the instincts. 60-70-series mid-profiles it is. And I, for one, am not so vain about showing a little sidewall
Reading one of their specs leaves you wanting to buy a vowel…
