Practical reasons to downsize wheel and tire package.

My wife's car is getting close to needing new tires again. It is a 2012 Elantra with the stock size 17x7 wheels and 215/45/17 tires on it. I was looking at options and came to the conclusion that downsizing to a 15x6.5 with a 195/65/15 would make tons of sense.

The problem with the 17's are that they are loud and harsh. So much so that I really don't like driving the car. They are pretty responsive to inputs but I would trade that responsiveness for the better ride and less noise. It's a small econo sedan, it doesn't need 17" wheels with 45 series tires.

I'm going to try to present a case to the wife to downsize. I doubt she would notice the lack of responsiveness but I would hope she would notice the better ride and less road noise.

The key points I'm going to make are; smoother quieter ride, possible increase in MPG's, cheaper subsequent tire replacement costs, opening up more tire choices that will last longer than 30k miles.

Does anyone have any stories that may bolster my case?

For a daily driver, I can tell many stories of customers, and myself, being happier with the smaller wheels and higher profile provided by their winter tires. The only legitimate reason for 17's on an Elantra is from the styling department.

Depending on what your roads are like, far less incidence of pothole-related wheel damage. Better snow traction with a narrower tire, if it matters.

You might not need to go down to a 15. And depending on what is available in a 15 inch wheel you may be better off with 16. Shop both sizes. Not as much selection in 15s typically. Road noise and whatnot is more the specific tire used than the size.

In reply to clutchsmoke:

There are many more tire options in a 15 than the 17's that are on it. The harshness is 100% due to size I believe. Both sets of tires that we have had on this car have been too loud and too harsh in my opinion. I don't think I would find any 17" tire acceptable. I would prefer a 15 to a 16.

I took my MINI from 17" runflats to 16" conventional tires. Made a huge difference in ride quality. I can't say how much was the runflat sidewalls being so stiff and how much was the taller tire. I notice my Miata gets a lot smoother when I switch 16s to 15s, or switch to the 14" snow tires.

Tires make all the difference. I've got a set of 17" Kumho black-and-rounds and a set of 14" Falken Azenis for my 1990 Miata, and the 17" setup rides much better.

But we do recommend a switch to 15" for every Mazdaspeed Miata owner. The stock wheels are heavy, fragile and expensive. As noted, going to a good 15" gives better ride, lighter weight, lower cost, more resistance to damage and a good tire choice.

My 2011 GLS came with 16s, I used the steelies for snows and the aftermarket rims for my Summer tires, I have done 210K with it on really bad roads with a full payload and never hurt a rim.

Stocks 16s still look decent too, the other one was Mrs Aussies old 2012 Limited with 17s

In reply to Nick (Not-Stig) Comstock: As long as the 15" wheels can clear the brakes, it should be a good idea.

I downsized to thr 17s on my ms3 from the 18s to get mo tire under the car, cheaper. It did not disappoint

aussiesmg wrote: My 2011 GLS came with 16s, I used the steelies for snows and the aftermarket rims for my Summer tires, I have done 210K with it on really bad roads with a full payload and never hurt a rim. Stocks 16s still look decent too, the other one was Mrs Aussies old 2012 Limited with 17s

Are the aftermarket wheels 16's as well? With all of your seat time would you recommend 16 or 15?

I downsized my Mini from 12" to 10". It transformed the car.

Seriously.

The cost of new wheels is something else to consider. Most OEM tire fitments are smaller than the car can wear and lead to speedometer error (reads low). I've had several cars that are improved by simply going up a bit in sidewall height.

Perfect example: 2005 Seqouia changed from 265/70 17 to 265/75 17 (I think, memory is fallible) and the additional 1" of tire height corrected the low reading speedo and rode a bit softer.

I had a few sets of 45 series tires on my accent that wore well into the 50-60k mile range. I'm surprised you're only getting 30k out of a set of tires.

I know the accent is a smaller and lighter car but not so much that it gets double the tire life....

The OEM kumho tires however are complete garbage and I didn't even get 30k out of them.

Buy better tires.

I finally got tired (no pun intended) of the factory 18" setup on my Honda Element and downgraded to a set of nice 16" Civic wheels. Huge difference. In my case most Elements came with 16s factory so I just followed suit on choosing that tire size for speedometer accuracy. The 18s were a horrible idea. I'm not sure what Honda was thinking when they spec' my car with them originally.

KyAllroad wrote: The cost of new wheels is something else to consider. Most OEM tire fitments are smaller than the car can wear and lead to speedometer error (reads low).

A smaller tire will make the speedometer read high, not low.

All the same, speedometers are usually inaccurate (reading high), it's the odometer you need to pay attention to.

I've had customers have us install -1 and -2 tire/wheel packages, and then abandon the old tires and wheels rather than sell/scrap them themselves.

In reply to failboat:

That's not going to do anything about the abysmal NVH issues caused by the 45 series tires. Which is the main reason I want to make the change.

I agree with everything said here. My Porsche was fun on track with big rims and wide low profile tires. But for everything else the smaller oe rims and tall sidewall tires were much better.

The nice thing about taller sidewall tires us you can increase your spring rate with pressure. A couple pounds of presser increase can change things alot with out any real harm to the tire. This lets you fine tune things for everyday driving. With low profile tires you can not really do this very well.

This is one of those first-world problems, but the only reason I didn't go from 18's to 17's for the evo is that the OEM brakes won't fit under a smaller wheel.
Otherwise I'd have saved quite a bit on rubber.

Really, 16s should ride nicely for you. My wifes Focus has 205/50-16 as the OEM size (Sport Suspension option) and I am currently runnning the new BFG Comp-2 A/S on it (not to be confused with the Comp-2) and for me the ride communicatve without being harsh on the sharp and rough bits of road. Also, the selection of tires for 16s is double that of 15s. A quick look on Tire Rack will prove that. Trust me, selection and options in tires are a godsend.

In reply to Knurled: yeah, sorry I had that right in my head and it came out backward.

I kind of wonder why OEM invariably reads high. If you do a geeky amount of math it appears that reading high means over the long run your vehicle travels less distance than the odometer indicates.

Meaning when the Seqouia read 100,000 miles it had in reality only travelled 95,000 miles. Toyota got out of some warrentee work and my residual value dropped before it should have.

If anyone uses this for a class action lawsuit remember I had the idea and want my million bucks!

KyAllroad wrote: In reply to Knurled: yeah, sorry I had that right in my head and it came out backward. I kind of wonder why OEM invariably reads high. If you do a geeky amount of math it appears that reading high means over the long run your vehicle travels less distance than the odometer indicates.

The odometers are usually accurate, the speedometers are not.

I think there is an SAE spec for speedometer accuracy that is VERY heavily biased towards reading high. Like 10% high is acceptable but 1% low isn't. (And I wish I could remember where I'd seen that)