All [summer] tires 205/50-16:

The car came with Michelin MXMs. I bought a replacement set, and put Bilsteins on the car. The ride was still too rough.

I bought a set of Toyo T1-S. The ride was suddenly nice, but the car was always riding on mushy air bubbles instead of solid contact patches. Control seemed no higher than on the smaller winter tires/wheels. Steering feel was even less! Very un-high-performance-like.

In other words, if one considers that a good tire must have flexible strength, the Michelins were 'all' strength and 'no' flexibility while the flimsy Toyos were the opposite (I now believe Toyo 'fudges' on T1-S load ratings).

I now have Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3s on the car, and they're a very nice compromise. Smoother-rolling than the Michelins ever were. But, unlike the Toyos, I can feel every little bump. Unlike the Michelins, this hasn't given me a headache when trundling around town alone on an empty gas tank. And I expect the ride to improve as the tires wear.

But the feedback I'm once again getting via the seat and the steering wheel encourage me to actively participate in the steering of the car in a way the Toyos never did (with the Toyos, steering was a bit boat-like; the car did not feel as if it ever had a very solid/immediate connection to the ground).

I'm not happy about the loss of comfort in going from the Toyos to the Goodyears, but I have a very firmly-suspended car, and expecting the tires to do all the bump smoothing is not a good strategy (one invisible bump at 60+ mph cost me 2 Toyos in an instant; 2 of the MXMs once survived when 2 wheels didn't!; I guess with the Goodyears either tires and wheels will both survive or both die depending upon the size of the blow).

My initial reaction was that I guess I'm getting old and soft and 'need' to go back to the mushy/flimsy Toyos, but now that I've fine-tuned the pressures and have a few headache-less miles on the GS-D3s and can tell how much more precise/immediate control I have with them, I'm having trouble seeing myself going back to mushy-air-bubble toyoland.

The GS-D3s are a much less extreme strength/flexibility compromise than either the Michelin or the Toyo (though they have a beefy look and a semi-radical-looking tread design), and they really help the car feel alive in a good/sporty way (unless too many miles on rough pavement have finally pounded the driver into submission).

They're a bit heavier than the Michelins and noticeably heavier than the Toyos, but not as heavy as the Bridgestones. So, based upon my initial experiences with the GS-D3s, unless you're drag-racing (or have a poorly-sorted suspension like mine) and counting grams of tire mass (in which case you might want to try the flimsy Toyos), I highly recommend this new high-performance made-in-Germany Goodyear summer tire. (If it weighted a pound less, I'd call it essentially perfect.)

A Goodyear dealer will try to get a lot of money for them, but Tire Rack and Discount Tire offered them at very reasonable prices.

- Dave; '95 854T, 143K mi