Narrow tires with a bad fuel ranking or wider lrr tires?

[MorvanBen]

Hi guys!

I am scratching my head on a super exciteing subject: tires!

First, should we write tires or tyres? 🤡
Then, I noticed that the more a tire is narrow, the less it is fuel efficient regarding the fuel ranking from A to E


If you want a A class, the narrowest you can find is 165, then few more in 175 and most of the A tires are between 185-205 large.

In 135, the best you can find is C
In 145 is B ( one size) the C
In 155 again you have 1 size in B then C
In 165 one size in A, few B then C
And so on

When it comes to fuel economy, you need a light car, narrow tires, not too much of friction, a small engine and a good scd. Super mini cars like C1, Aygo, 107, up!, Mirage, Cuore will have all those criterias because they are small ( except for the CD but the have a small fro Tal area)

I am thinking of taking a cheap eco car for my short trips and keep my diesel multipla for longer distances.
With spritmonitor, I noticed that the Daihatsu Cuore and the mitsubishi Mirage are very good when it comes to fuel economy, as well as the Suzuki celerio ( a bit rare and more expensive in 2nd hand)

So should I get the car that can legally have the narrowest tires? Should I get the one that can have tires with the best ranking?

Should I consider the weight of the wheels+ tires ? Like a C energy class tire in 135 R13 is better than a 165 R15 in A energy class?

What do you recon?

[freebeard]

IMHO it depends on where you drive.

My only relevant experience is running 145s on the front of a rearwheel drive that had 165s. I found that downhill in the mountains, it ran out of tires before brakes.

As for the weight, consensus seems to be that it depends on city vs country driving. IOW, stop-n-go vs cruising.

[oil pan 4]

Always get LRR unless the 165s are an extravagant luxury and the narrower tires are significantly cheaper.
Otherwise the narrower average rolling resistance tires will never save you anything.

[freebeard]

Always....
Otherwise the narrower average rolling resistance tires will never save you anything.

Always is a long time. Width is coupled to aspect ratio and overall diameter. My observatkon is that 135s and 145s are de rigueur on Cal Look Beetles for drag racing, and the BMW i3 for electrical efficiency. My experience is that 145s gave better tracking (less wander).

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Always get LRR unless the 165s are an extravagant luxury and the narrower tires are significantly cheaper.

Until around 10 years ago, most mainstream econoboxes in my country were factory-fitted with 13-inch rims, and even Renault switched from 14-inch to 13 in the latest versions of the Clio II prior to its phaseout. Now it's much harder to find any good-quality 13-inch tire than it used to be, but it had been more than 20 years that certain sizes such as 145/80R13 and 155/80R13 which used to be mainstream fell out of favor among tire manufacturers since it seemed much easier to simply push the customers to 165/70R13 or 175/70R13 which are the "least harder" to find from reputable brands. However, as they're more oriented to "budget" users, it's almost unobtainium to find any LRR here...