[ChrstphrR]

Interesting find there Frank.

It doesn't seem all that intuitive, until you think about what actually goes on with a tire while the car's rolling -- and going through turns.

Even if you're not charging a turn, at normal road speeds, you still have weight transfer, and body roll. That changes the position of the tires relative to the road, tilting them away from the ideal almost upright orientation that'll give them a consistant, even contact patch with the road.

After all, it's those dynamic changes -- the forces of the car acting on the suspension and tires, that make for most all of the seemingly counterintuitive suspension setups. If body roll and loading up different corners of the suspension didn't occur going through turns (i.e. ignoring the laws of physics), we wouldn't even have any oddball setups with the weird slants and tilts with camber, caster, toe. We'd just have neutral zeros for all measures, and it'd be ideal at any speed -- just like Unicorns are set up for race day!

That said, I'll reserve judgement on this conical-tire idea yet until I see more information (tests, objective reviews with *tests*, maybe some ... tests) on this one.