Thanks for the link Lanchester.. Yes, I think I'll resist the urge to fry my brain with all the data and just stick with the very helpful and mindless calculators..
Appreciate that you like the look of the rims. They really are top quality as well, you will find that a lot of race and especially rally cars are mounted with compomotives.. yeah yeah, overkill, I know. But they will look great.. especially after I put on some snow-camo vinyls on the roof racks and lower body panels. and add some nice white mudguards.. juvenile, yes.. but fun.. it should even manage to turn some heads in Verbier, hehe
I currently have the Bridgestone Dueller 185/65 R14 mud and snow tires that came with the car. For the alpine winter use I have planned for the panda, I feel it is wise to get some real snow tires. I always thought that the Bridgestone Blizzaks were the best friction winter tires.. but I’m not extremely up to date when it comes to the current market offerings..
When it comes to tire width, I understand that the thinner the better.. but I wonder how big the difference between a 165 and 205 really is, especially on a 4wheel drive car… For instance, I’ve had no problem shooting up the mountain in snow-storms when I had a Porsche 996 turbo mounted with blizzaks.. Can’t remember the width but they were very fat indeed, standard for the rear is 295 and the winter tires weren’t too far off. People would pull off to the side of the road and put on chains but I would just keep on motoring.. if it ever got a little sideways all I had to do was hit the gas-pedal and wait for the 4wd to dig in..
Anyway.. here are the alternatives in size as far as I can tell.. now I only need to choose the brand and model of tire and limit the choices to which of these sizes it is available in.. I think? So which are the best winter tires out right now?
For a 15inch rim the TH3's are available in 5.5x15 through 7x15 (no 16 inch but there is a 17). I could go with 165/65, 175/60, 195/55, 205/50 on the 5.5x15s. Would there be any reason to choose a wider rim than the 5.5s if I wanted to use one of the three wider tire options?
For a 16 inch rim I would have to choose the TH2 (which is also nice, it’s what I had on my evo) that is available in 5.5x16 and 7x16.. so I could go 185/50, 195/50 or 205/45.
I will only be using the Panda during the winter months, so I’m inclined to get the nice big rims on my winter tires since I will never mount the summer ones again.. but I like the TH3s more than the TH2s so I just don’t know anymore..
..have added som pics so everyone understands what I'm talking about.