The Celica comes with 15" wheels, Not a lot of performance tires to choose from here. My true wish would be to have some Cragar SS wheels and some Michelin summer tires that work well on this car. I know that is not possible, but maybe some one knows of same like similar in the 16-17" size that would be a good fitment. Any ideas?
You are right, but I have been there, I have not yet exhausted myself or the search queries.
Thank You
I have found a lot of great places to shop, just have not found the answers I want, and true enough may be I won’t get the answers I want. May be what I want is ridiculous, so be it. I’ll give up when I’m satisfied it can’t be found.
I flagged your last post, I’ll remove it if you’ll remove the site. First time poster plus odd site reference usually adds up to spam.
And wanting ‘Cragar SS wheels’ on a Celica is really odd. What year Celica?
so sorry my bad!
The 2005 Celica GT is my car and I like it, fuel mileage is great, not a muscle car but fun to drive.
I need it to stick to the road better than it does, I live in Florida, the old tires on it are just not sufficient.
If I get some new tires of any kind I’m sure that would be a great improvement . But I’ve been shopping summer tires to get the most performance on wet and dry roads. I am and old KID that has always liked the Cragar SS style, not too prone to keep up with fads and styles.
Ultimately those wheels with a set of Michelin tires would be a nice Birthday gift for Me, if they fit the car!
What year?
With all the tire sellers having online search features and specs I could have found tires in less time than it took to log in and post. And another request to remove the link.
OK
take the challenge and show me some wet weather summer tires that fit the 15" wheel and are not smaller than 24" diameter, speed meter reads fast now. Keep in mind I want to push it through the curves and stop on a dime leaving change behind. Getting a taller tire would decrease the cruising RPM which is more important to me than a smaller tire that may make the speed meter more correct.
A taller tire would increase the traction more than a short wide tire would too!
it is a 2005
Go to tirerack and do a search for 17" tire/wheel combos for your car. Plenty with summer tires.
And no Cragar will fit it.
Why?
I like nice wheels on my car too. And I’m elderly. Is that odd?
Cragar SS wheels are available for rear wheel drive cars and pickups. Your front wheel drive Celica doesn’t have them available, and it’s much newer than the '60s/'70s cars that typically have Cragars. Plenty of nice alloy wheels available for your Celica. It was ‘odd’ to me because they would not something I’d put on a modern car. To each his own…
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I’m not sure I’d want to put 17’s on a Celica. You’re not dealing with gobs of hp/torque there, so that extra unsprung weight is going to have an impact on performance.
BTW, I checked, and Tirerack doesn’t have summer tires for the Celica. But it does have high-performance all-season, and I think assuming the rest of the Celica is stock, if you put a set of those on it you’d be fine. We aren’t talking about a Ferrari here. 
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That’s what I’d do (15" high performance all seasons). But that’s not what the OP wants.
I think the OP is fixated on the ’ summer ’ part which as far as I can tell really means 3 season tires . I wonder if they realize that larger wheels will mean lower profile tires .
195/60/15 tires as originally fitted. Choose the Yokohama Avid Envigor or Firestone Firehawk all season tires. All the performance you can muster driving on Florida roads and good during the rainy season with all the sipes and grooves.
As for the Cragars - they were made for rear wheel drive cars with zero offsets. Your car uses a large positive offset that Cragar doesn’t make. But there are thousands of wheels to choose from.
WOW
Thanks for the input
Yes I agree very odd to want that style of wheel on this car
Trends seem to change a lot, Chrome, colors, mix and match, all black, to each their own and I for one do not like the cob web look.
I found out this morning that the following sizes were OEM available in different markets ;
195- 60- 15, 205- 55- 15, 215- 45- 17, and 205- 50- 16. Japan, Europe, USA
5 bolt x 100mm and a 39mm positive offset with a 54.1 center bore
a returned E-Mail said a 35 to 45 offset would probably work fine.
You are right about the weight of a set of Cragars being heavy for this car, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice performance of anything for a look or art. All things considered, money, style, performance, it’s a big decision for me, buying any wheels for this car is a poor investment choice.
Tires are needed one way or the other. I’ve been used to riding on Michelins and only recently found out what summer tires are, so like a kid in the candy store I took a long hard look.
I’m nearing the end of the research, nearing the time to make a decision, won’t be driving in the rain before new tires are on it.
Thank you all VERY MUCH for helping in this decision.
Let’s be sure you really know what summer tires are.
Summer tires are by definition tires that suck in the snow. They are not necessarily tires that are fantastic performance on dry pavement - not all summer tires are created equal, and some summer tires are outperformed by higher-end all-season performance tires.
I’d recommend any recent November issue of Consumer Reports: big article on tires, categories and characteristics, and test results of many types of tires with ratings of wet traction, dry traction, snow, ice, handling, noise, tread life, etc., etc.
I run ultra performance summer tire in Florida because the car never sees temperatures below 40 degree and these things aren’t safe at those low temperatures. I use these because I take the car to track days at Sebring and PBIR and other race tracks. They work very well for that. But they wear out fast and some of these types of tires don’t work so well in the rain.
Since you can’t get those for your 15 inch size, no issues. If you step up to low profile 45 series 17 inch tires and wheels, I’d suggest you still look for M&S rated tires for the rain performance. You will still have loads of traction with the lower profile tires. They will ride a bit harder, though.
If you want to autocross the car with Martin Sports Car Club or Gulfcoast Autocrossers, or do track days then the ultra performance tires are the way to go. They will give great traction, give lots of feedback and won’t come apart with the heat of track days.