How do we get a company to make good tires for a Cobra?

[twobjshelbys]

Originally Posted by cycleguy55

Yes, but only S and T speed ratings.

You bring up an excellent point...

In the search for a tire for any performance vehicle you have to trade:

1. Dry/wet performance
2. Speed rating (street vs track)
3. Mileage expectation.

The Ford GT tires (which I had an early generation of on my Cobra and the subsequent generation on the GT500s) was a compromise tire. The Ford GT manual was silent, but the GT500 manual cautioned that they were for use over 50*F. They were horrible in cold weather and on cold pavement. On the other hand the tires would last a lifetime of miles - 40-50K. As they aged they got worse. Some people reported that as a track tire they had pretty good performance.

I replaced mine with Bridgestones which originated with a class of Porsche and Bugatti tires). They were really "sticky" and performed well in cold conditions. (Still, not what you'd get from an all season street tire). The down side of that performance is that the tires wore out in about 5000 miles. I also got real nervous on wet pavement (never hit "the limit").

So what do you want? Good performance on the track or a 50K mile street tire? Wet vs dry? (Remember, racing teams use two sets of tires.)

The point here is that even if someone started making tires, they will really only meet the expectations of about 1/3 of the population...