The Exige is my daily drive so the semi slicks aren’t going to cut it. And lets face it the small amount of days a year you could use them to their max, are you really going to on the public roads?? Not to mention the wear rate, seems a waste all that sticky rubber just being left on dual carriageways.
So, that brings me to my first query. A lot of Lotus owners seem to go for Yokohama, AD08s for all year around. But from what I can tell they are expensive, wear quickly and don’t perform well enough to justify that. So why?
If you run 205s on the front you can buy a full set of Michelin Pilot Sport 3s for �380! They seem to get good all round reviews, are a �100 cheaper than the AD08’s and will no doubt last longer.
If you stick with 195s up front the choice is even more limited, which starts opening up a consideration of running different makes front to rear? Now I’ve always been under the belief that as long as you keep the same tyres on one axle, front to back doesn’t matter. But I know the Lotus crowd seem to frown on it? I’m not dismissing it just would like to know the reasoning behind it?
And finally would love to hear peoples experiences running all season tyres on the Exige and what they run?
I think you need to change the title as its a little confusing, the tyres you are talking about are not all season tyres they are summer tyres. True all season tyres have a degree of snow ability but would be totally shite if you tried to use them on a track day and are not really what the exige is all about as they would not be a high performance tyre.
After reading the thread on seloc I tend to agree with the opinions on there, buying an exige and then looking for high wear rates and cost savings sort of negates the point of the car, one of the big differences between the exige and the elise is the tyres.
I know a guy who fitted some Continentals on his exige and he thought they were great till he brought the car to Anglesey and spent more time facing the wrong way.
The AD08 is a great tyre that works well on the car, forget reviews where tyres are tested on 1500kg BMWs the Lotus is a different ball game really. The AD08 will give you much better wet performance than a AO48 and last longer as its a deeper tread and is ideal for the road and odd track day and should be ideal for your use. If you start going for anything with a higher wet bias then you will start to loose most of the difference between running an exige or an elise.
And thanks for your guidance. The reason I bought an Exige as opposed to an Elise was solely for the looks. The Elise, in my opinion, handles great, I’m not looking for an improvement. If I get some then that’s even better. Therefore as I’m using the car primarily on the road wear rates and cost do count for a bit more than those just running their cars on track. Don’t get me wrong cost and wear rate are not at the top of my priority list, without a doubt it’s grip, but that’s grip in the wet, on bumpy A-Roads, get me home in the snow as well as fast cornering in the dry. For the track its my intention to have another set of wheels with the semi slicks fitted
