Pirelli P4 Tires

wjpm · 02-15-2011, 10:11 PM

A few weeks ago I bought a 9000 mile 2010 Insight.

I was looking at the tires and they're Pirelli P4: 185/60R15

That's not the recommended size .... Can someone tell me why the previous owner would have gone to this size? brand?

Should I go to OEM or something else at the recommended size?

Thanks, yall

**Jayemtee** · 02-16-2011, 04:28 AM

Some people don't like the stock tires at all. Some people think ANYTHING is better than the stock Dunlops. With that in mind, there's no telling why someone would select that brand and size. Are you on stock wheels? It could have been what was on sale at the time, he might have been a Pirelli dealer, or something else.

If the tires are working fine now and the tread is good, use them up. When they wear out, I'd suggest going back to the recommended size. As for brand, read up on this forum to see what tires people are using that have the same driving conditions as yourself. Consider the weather and type of driving.

Cobb · 02-16-2011, 10:29 AM

Looks like a +1 sizing. OEM is 175/65/15. A tire dealer wanted to do the same for me. I declined as I did not want to mess up fuel economy with winter coming on. I got mines from tire rack and a local dealer to install them.

wjpm · 02-16-2011, 05:39 PM

There isn't alot tires in the correct size to chose from.

What's anyones experience with:

Dunlop SP Sport 01

Continentals

WFalicoff · 02-17-2011, 02:48 PM

We changed the Dunlop tires on our I2 to Nokian WRG2 of the same size as your Pirelli tires. The performance improvement was dramatic, especially as the Nokian's also are snow rated (have the snow flake certification). That is they perform better in every respect to the OEM tires that come with the car. That size tire will have a small effect on the accuracy of the speedometer and mpg calculation, on the order of 1 to 1.5%. After we corrected for this, we saw no deteriation in mpg from our car. In fact Consumer Reports give the Nokian tires high marks for their low friction.

I would keep the Pirellis and my guess is the car handles better with these tires than the Dunlops. They may have a small negative effect on gas mileage. However, i doubt this will be noticeable.