historical accuracy, was: <VV> Tire gurus

[mhicks130 at cox.net]

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Message: 9

All this discussion brings up a point. With regard to historical 
accuracy, is it better to preserve the factory LOOK of the (factory 
stock) car, or it's speedo's mechanical accuracy? In this case, is it 
better to have a tire with the diameter that LOOKS like an authentic 
7.00-13, or one who's size is chosen merely to allow the speedo to 
function accurately? And if radials end up adversely affecting the look, 
should they be banned in stock classes?

As stated before, I dislike the undersized look of (most all) present 
radial tires. Like any car, wide-open wheel wells (what you get when the 
tires don't fill the openings) don't look good. The downside is that 
with 13" wheels, it looks like we are pretty much stuck with 
undersize-looking tires (when they're radials.)

-Mark C
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I don't know, the 185-80's look fine to me.  If anything even they look like there's too much sidewall on them (unless they're whitewalls).  Do they look the same as the bias ply?  No, but the biggest difference in looks to me isn't the OD, which I'm sure my eyes couldn't detect anyway, but the profile.  The bias plys have that distinctive shape with the treads looking like they're on a little cliff.  I've never seen a radial with that shape.  I'll say this though, if they had radials back when the Corvair was new, they would have used them.  Even if Chevy would have been to cheap to put them on new, when it came time for replacements  people would have put on radials.  They're just so much better.  It is hard to look at old cars tires without thinking the tires look too big though because of today's standards.  Even disregarding the 35 series "rim protectors", all cars today come with much lower profile tires than they used to.  The 175-70 R13's on my '85 VW Golf looked liked balloons compard to the 215-50 R15's on my Passat station wagon.  Does the Passat "need" 50 series tires? I don't think so, I remember when only Turbo Carreras came with 50 series tires.  Now that's considered a "normal" profile.  I'm not a concours type so my opinion may not be too relevant but I still say the 185-80 whitewalls look good.

mike