Tire strategy ?
 

It seems typical that with a staggered set up that the rear tires wear out maybe twice as fast as the fronts. This presents itself with a dilemma in my case when my OEM Dunlops in the rear are a few months and miles (11K) away from needing replacement. I would eventually like to go with the same brand/model and am looking at the Conti's but the question is do I replace the Dunlop with the Conti's now or just put on a lower cost set of rears until I need to do the fronts too. Oh my driving style is just for pleasure and am not interested in track usage. Suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks

i would never mix tire brands and specs. replace them with the same tire model all around

OK so for discussion purpose what would be the pros and cons of mixing and would there be a safety issue or just looks. We are just talking about normal driving where track type handling is not a concern. The other issue at hand would be cost where in my case to replace the Dunlops it would be around $750 vs. Hankook at $550 with a similar tread design. Just thinking out loud.

I've heard the mantra about always having the same tyres all 'round, but not really seen a good justification for it. I can certainly see an argument for not having mixed tyres left & right, because that could lead to veering under braking. But, you naturally get a grip & handing difference between (say) lightly worn fronts & part-worn rears, even if they are the OEM-spec tyres. The car seems to deal with that OK, so I struggle to see what significant downsides would result from having different manufacturers front & rear.

Right now, I have the same brand (Pirelli) all 'round, but the rears are 305/30s rather than the stock 295/30s. The only thing I've noticed is that the speedo is now more accurate, due to the slightly larger rolling radius. I was intending to go with MPSS on the rear, but couldn't get them quickly enough.

I'd replace the rears with the brand you want to go with all around and just replace the fronts a little sooner than later.

Jag must've got a sweetheart deal on the Dunlops as no one replaces them with the same tire due to their cost. Dunlop should've offered the tire at lower retail and then most owners would've considered them at replacement time. It's not like they were so much better, that the additional cost was warranted.

If Jag payed all the money to put those Dunlop's on the car, it was a poor choice and hurt their margins.

The most notable effect will be an alteration in oversteer/understeer.
The only area I would avoid is if you have a very sticky (IE high performance) compound up front, and go with a hard (IE long mileage) compound to the rear. That can be a deadly combination, as you always want your fronts to break loose in a corner first. Manufacturers design this into most consumer cars as a safety feature.

Speaking of safety. In the list of the top 5 most critical safety items on your car, tires hold the number one slot....
Not exactly the best place to pence pennies...

BOL

Bare in mind, tire dimensions. Actual tread width that contacts the ground will vary. For instance the Hankooks are 10.1" in a 285 and Pirelli is 11". I just switched to Pirelli's and should know the feel wednesday.
Depends on your conditions which tire to run. If you want a good performance tire with long tread life, the Pilots are great. If you want all performance I've always gone with Pirelli as they have a nice feel.
If you want a decent tire that is good in all weather the conti's are great.
Hankooks seemed fine to me, only had 8k miles on mine and hit a pot-hole which bubbled two tires. (Only downside being the tread width difference)

Regards
Derek Fricke

Agreed, thought it's pretty unlikely that anyone would do anything that extreme. My point was, you shouldn't be concerned about having (say) P-Zeros on the front & MPSS on the rear during a process of transition.