In general, the lower the number the “stickier” the tire. However the lower the number is also the faster the tire will wear out. So a 200 treadwear tire will be quick sticky but will wear out quickly, while a 500 TW tire will be much less sticky but will last far longer. Wombat recommended a 340 TW tire, a very reasonable tire for normal “sporty” driving.
A secondary thing to look at is the tire classification. The Firehawk is a Ultra High Performance Summer tire. Tire rack describes this as "Focused on nimble handling on dry and wet roads with acceptable ride quality and tread life. Not for winter conditions. " Note the last statement depending on where you live. There are many tire categories from extremely sticky (basically race tires) to very long wearing all-weathers that are pretty grip-limited.
Finally the GTI is a relatively powerful car that drives only the front tires. The fronts get 80+% of the wear. The rears are literally along for the ride. This leads to 2 strategies
Rotate the tires front to rear every 3-6 months to equalize the wear
Accept the front tires will need to be replaced pretty frequently.
Great info. I always run dedicated snow tires because, well, I live in northern Vermont and in addition to snow and ice it’s usually sub-freezing for many weeks on end. Summer rubber does not like cold, and really most all-seasons don’t cut it up here even with AWD (driving an Audi S5 at the moment). I heartily recommend dedicated winter tires for anyone in the snow belt.
Yeah, I compete in autocross and tire trials, and my wife says our garage looks like a Firestone dealership with all the tire stacks. It has taught me alot about tires and tire wear. I also used to compete in a FWD MINI, so I know all about tire wear on a FWD car. At least I live in Texas so do not deal with snow tires, but I do run all-seasons in the winter.
I did not make a specifc tire recommendation as I do not know the specific tire sizes/widths needed for a GTI. I will say I am NOT a fan of the Chinese tires for durability, handling, or treadwear. The Michelins are awesome all around tires, but as noted they cost $$$. Cheaper but still good alternatives are from BF Goodrich, Yokohama, Bridgestone, Pirelli, Continental, and the other upper-middle tier companies.
If you are staying in the same class of tire, changing 2 is fine. If you are changing the class of tire (say going from a basic all season to a performance tire, or vice versa), then you need to do 4 so you do not get a wide grip disparity front to rear.
My family’s fleet has a couple of cars with mismatched brands front to rear…but they are the same class of tire.
With AWD, I like to change all four at the same time if possible, though I don’t know if that’s strictly necessary as long as the rears are the same and the fronts are the same.I do know that dealerships here generally will insist on doing all four, but then, stealerships.
The only reason I can see is if the computer detects an unexpected difference in front to rear traction and gets freaked out.
Here is an (extreme) example: The new Civic Si’s CPU freaked out when a motorsports magazine tracked the car at Daytona. Note it was never unsafe (just alarming)
To be sure, I’d peruse the Golf R forums to see if anyone has reported an issue with changing 2 tires at a time, but I doubt its an issue.
When I had my Golf R, and replaced my summer tires, I got four at once, because all four were fried. But yeah, when we had Subies we never bothered with getting four at once, and nothing bad happened.
With the Audi now, I want to get a dedicated set of summer wheels and new summer tires eventually, but I’ll probably wait until the stock ones wear out.
Company that intentionally lied and misled regulators and customers for years somehow finds no internal wrongdoing in the creation of a super racist ad. Shocking.
Nothing to do with their history, just the usual failure to understand that intent doesn’t matter in these cases. “No intent to be racist” is simply not a good excuse, not when anyone with half a brain could have seen that the ad went off the rails so clearly. I’ve lived and worked in Germany, and it’s not like Germans are totally unfamiliar with racial stereotypes or imagery, either, so the fact that their marketing people or the people they paid didn’t see this ad for what it was says to me that they were either stupid or at best grossly out of touch with the zeitgeist.
Which, for a person in advertising, is just as bad as being stupid.
Oh, absolutely. I have no knowledge of the people involved, so I was confining myself to broad strokes, but personally I believe the people making the ad knew exactly what they were doing, and deserve to be held accountable.
I’ve done it twice, here in the SF Bay Area. It ran me $500 the first time (4-5 years ago) and $600 when I did it again at a new house this last month. I assume it would be even cheaper somewhere else. That said, our main electrical breaker panel wasn’t too far from the garage both times. Don’t know where yours would be in a condo.
