What all-season tires do you buy for your x308?

The size I have is 225/60/R16 but I’m having trouble finding the right tires anywhere around. Everyone has the ones with V speed rating but nothing higher than that. I even called some shops that specialize in European cars—no luck.

So, my options are:

• compromise for V
• find a shop that’s capable of getting nice tires with higher than V rating
• import for overseas
• change the rims do a different size.
  

I’d love to hear your opinion. I’m located in Central Jersey.

Try Town Fair Tires
I have Toyo tires that run perfectly with great warranty

I checked, no luck, the highest speed rating tires they have is V, which is not one recommended for XJ8.

Having multiple cars with less than 17" wheels, you've touched a nerve. Climbing up on soapbox. Ever watch Barrett Jackson or Mecum auction on TV? Next time pay attention to tires. Every 60's muscle car with OEM wheels that goes across the block, nearly every freekin' one of them, has BF Goodrich TA radials. That's just about the only manufacturer still making 14 and 15 inch tires. They're not a very good tire, but its all there is. Move up into the 80s when 16" wheels first appeared (and when I was coming of driving age), for many widths and aspect ratios, there is nothing available and hasn't been for decades. Everybody worries about old tires, but I've got one classic car I have to drive gingerly on 25 year old tires because THERE'S LITERALLY NOTHING AVAILABLE! I've been searching for 20 years. There'll be some listings shown, but then never any luck trying to actually order them. Eventually I guess I'm gonna have to have some aftermarket 3-piece wheels made to fit 17s. Oh, and then in the 80's there were metric diameters! I sold my Capri with the 390mm metric wheels. I last replaced tires on it in 1991 (at $175 each in 1991 dollars) and the next time found a set of 15" Mustang GT wheels for it and $69 tires. But get this, instead of bringing the Michelin tires back, now they sell reproduction wheels that look like the originals yet fit standard tires. So a new wheel is easier to make than an existing tire design?

I say grab whatever you can get now while you can ( and maybe buy a few extra sets and hermetically seal them in a vault or something) and be thankful there's anything available at all that fits because the next iteration for our now officially "antique" 308s is we'll be down to one choice from Coker at $3,000 a set and to add insult to injury, one side will be a whitewall. But seriously, V will be more than sufficient. When are you ever going to drive a sustained 149mph+? I put Goodyear Eagles on mine a couple years ago. I've had generally good luck with Goodyear Eagles tho treadwear they'll be gone in two or three years and I can only hope that it won't be the last set because I don't have space to store a lifetime of tires.

Even H rated tires will work unless you want to go to jail for 'reckless endangerment'.

In Texas, driving 130 mph could lead to a reckless driving charge, which is a Class B misdemeanor, carrying fines and potential jail time, as it demonstrates a willful or wanton disregard for safety

Normal sedan driving will not require special tires.(now my XKR might be a different story?)

Are you concerned with what's recommended?

Or are you concerned with the right tire for your driving conditions and habits?

There are many tires that will work very well on your car.

Cheers
DD

Being a musclecar guy and spending about 75% of my time working on musclecars, I hear ya....but also disagree somewhat.

The BFG T/A has become the "go to" tire. They look appropriate and work reasonably well. But there ARE other choices out there. A lot of guys don't like the look nor the price of the alternatives, though.

I don't want to get too far into the weeds on non-Jaguar tires, though ! :-)

Cheers
DD

I wonder about some of the European countries on what they do about tires. If I’m not mistaken, I think Germany and maybe even Switzerland (?) have very strict rules that when your car was new, you absolutely must replace the tires with the exact same ones that were on it originally. You couldn’t modify anything on the vehicle. Now, I’m going by memory and it’s been a bit since I’ve heard about that.

Its not a bad tire for going back and forth to the car show and just tooling around town. I don't know about motorsport effectiveness, autocross or such, but the thing that kills me about the BF Goodrich, of which I have a couple of cars outfitted, is they tend to use way too much Santoflex 6PPD additive to prevent dry-rot. That's the stuff that leaches out of the rubber and turns your tires brown practically overnight and is so hard to clean off. (It also allegedly makes Salmon sick when the rubber bits wash off the road into the rivers, but that's another matter.) Westley's Blech-Wite used to combat it, but the formula was changed to something totally ineffective when it was sold to Black Magic. Meguiars Hot Rims Wheel and Tire Cleaner is about the best alternative I've found, but still wind up having to scrub the face of each white letter individually with the tip of my finger with gloves, a rag and a dab of acetone (trying not to get it on the rest of the tire). Its a pre-show ritual every weekend, including this one. Be glad the white letter thing went out of style before the X308, but you can still wind up with brown tires. I don't know what brand tires came on my brother's Camry, but after a month, they're way more brown than black. My Goodyears have not been too bad. I've got some Continentals that brown pretty quick, but nothing like the Goodriches. Yokohamas and Toyos are fine, at least the ones I've got. But if our OP is obsessive-compulsive about the tires being black all the time like they should be, then it might be something to look for in online reviews.

^
Next time you need to clean the white letters - or the full white on a white wall tire - just use a new SOS pad and some clean water and rinse it off with a hose.

It’s not magic but it works like magic.

To my knowledge there's seller have W rating
But why you want such tire with heavy car that doesn't have great aero still don't know looks like burning cash

I've used Vs and Hs on a series of big Jag sedans. My current car rarely sees anything over 80 at the most and then not for long periods. It's a weekend and drive-to-car-show vehicle. In my view, anything over V is serious overkill, V is far more than one needs for normal driving and and H is just fine. My next step, after getting a new and rapidly increasing coolant leak fixed and suspension bumps/thumps eliminated, is replacing the 2017 date Bridgestones on my '03 and the 2001 Pirelli sitting unused in the trunk for about 24 years! The Bridgestones still have tons of tread on them, but eight years old is enough for me!

Sounds like you're thinking of the TUV regulations in Germany. I'm no expert on them myself, but I think you can change what's fitted provided it's approved for that use. My limited understanding is anything sold to use on motor vehicles has to be government tested & approved before it's road legal.

There's more to the speed rating that just the speed they're safe to though. A higher speed rated tyre has a stronger construction less likely to deform under load so handles better on corners as they don't fold under the rim & so on. Plus, of course, a heavy car running at the same speed on the same tyre will put a lot more heat into the tyre than a light car because most of the heat comes from the tyre flexing under the dynamic loads. A higher speed rating means they'll handle the heat better so should give better life & prevent issues with tyre construction failing too.

Darn it! You've touched another nerve, Ken! Hadn't thought about it in years, but I used to buy Scotch-Brite Never-Rust Wool Soap Pads. Those were awesome! Graphics on the box showed multiple uses, as you might expect cleaning a BBQ grill, but also mentioned they were good for cleaning tires. The great thing was you could let them dry out and use them over, and over and over again, till all the soap had been used up. I could do a whole lot of white letters. But like everything else that worked too good, 3m discontinued them. Can't make any money on a product that's reuseable over and over but if we make the customer have to throw away a rusty steel wool pad even tho only 10% of the soap was used.....
Reminders I can't get tires in the right size anymore for my 80s sports cars, can't get original formula Bleche-Wite anymore, and can't get Never Rust wool soap pads anymore. I'm not I'm not having much luck in this thread.

I agree.

But....

IMO a fellow has to really look at his own expectations, driving habits, climate, road conditions, etc and buy tires accordingly.

Here is the USA high speed driving (over 100mph let's say) for prolonged duration is not very common. And, frankly, 95% of the Jags are driven as though there was a bowl of goldfish on the front seat. In those cases there's really no real world safety advantage to high-spec, performance-oriented tires. A wide variety of decent quality, mid-range tires would be perfectly safe.

And sometimes local climate plays a big part in tire decisions. I live in a very rainy area. Wet-traction and resistance to hydroplaning are big safety considerations for me, much more so than speed rating or maximum cornering adhesion.

Cheers
DD

Yeah I agree with what you're saying there, it's down to how you use the car as much as anything else.

I think it's waste of money even tire that 150mph rated won't blow right away that's impossible , still can't understand the reason why he would run such high speed tire we must know the reason so we can do same thing getting high speed rated tire

I run General Altimax on my 2003 XJ8. They have a service rating of T. That means they are rated for a sustained speed of 118 mph. So what?

There is no public road in the US where could legally drive at that speed, either sustained or momentarily. Nor would I want to, having experienced such speeds when I was much younger, and paid the price.

What now matters more to me is traction, resistance to hydroplaning, and handling for avoidance of danger, and all of that at speeds that are not reckless. The General Altimax delivers all of that. Beyond the forgoing considerations, service rating codes are irrelevant.

No idea how it works in the US, but over here fitting lower rated tyres can be used by insurance companies as a way of reducing their payout as they might claim a better performing tyre would have prevented or reduced the severity of the collision.

Just a thought to add to the convo.