Quote:
Originally Posted by Dean
I applaud the guy for thinking outside the box and challenging conventional wisdom.
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That's the funniest part about this. People have been shaving tires asymmetrically for years to try to get better handling in SCCA stock classes where camber adjustments aren't allowed outside of factory specs. This is not a new idea... it's a 40+ year old idea to bandaid suspension geometry issues.
Call me skeptical. I just think that if this idea had real merit, the folks at Hoosier, Goodyear, Bridgestone and Michelin would have sorted this out decades ago when they were battling each other in F1. The reason they haven't bothered with this level of asymmetry is because suspension changes are more useful.
Now, maybe there's a market for these tires in that you can slap them on a car with no other changes and get better handling. But who knows how the auto manufacturers will take to that as far as warranty on stuff like wheel bearings goes. We may see warranty work start getting denied over non-standard sized tires.
And maybe this guy really is on to something, and we'll see a revolution in tire design come out of this. Though, I do get the feeling that this guy is going to have a patent war on his hands if that's the case... because this idea is not as new as it seems, unless he's also patented tire manufacturing methods or something for this cone-shaped tire.
Either way, I'm skeptical. I'm totally willing to be proven wrong, but that's what's going to have to happen for me to believe. I want to see an apples to apples comparison where of two cars optimized for their tires, the cambertire car is faster.