I really hate speculating about things before Ive had the chance to experience it myself, but I had to do this. Through all the articles that Ive read both online and off, never once have I come across what kind of tires the Evo X is going to be running. Ive just looked at the tread design of the "official" pictures, and they do not appear to be "as" performance oriented as the current Advans. One of the many things that drew me to the Evo was of course its handling characteristics out of the box. I would hate to see its overall handling to be even further diminished by lack of a proper high performance tire.

Discuss.

 

If you take a closer look at the official pics, you'll see that it has different tires left and right. If either tire is going to be on the X, I'd bet it's the ones on the left side of the car (right side of the front-on picture.)

Not that it is a huge deal to us, the enthusiast. Most of us with be through the original tires and onto a second set in no time. Even though I don't plan on racing my X much, I have plans to immediately swap the stock tires for snows and pick up some rims and wider tires soon after purchase.

However, with all that said, this is the first year that Mitsu's handling electronics will be introduced to the USDM. Magazines will be reviewing with the stock tires, so it would be completely insane for Mitsu to put poorly handling tires on their brand new S-AWC drivetrain. Whatever tires the X comes with, I'm sure they'll be excellent.

 

I have a feeling its going to come with Neovas

 

What definitely does not make sense is trying to move to a more mainstream market on the current Advans, they just wear too quickly for the type of person who would cross shop a BMW or Mazda or VW. If they expect to draw sales from those makes, they need a tire like a Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3. Still max performance, but with much better wet performance and acceptable treadwear.

They're not trying to remain the poor-man's Ferrari, no-holds-barred, faster than an STI car. They're adding a modicum of comfort. Presumably, the new power and drivetrain, etc, will allow slightly better than IX performance despite a more comfortable ride, quieter, higher-quality interior, heavier weight, safer, bigger...and more reasonable tires.

 

i wonder who long it will take to get the aftermarket wheels for the 10

 

I doubt there's anything real special about the X's rims. The toughest part will be determining the offset (which isn't all that hard to do.) so rims of the same size will be immediately available, I'm sure.

The difficulty will be in determining what the *maximum* size rims and tires will be. That will be done through mostly trial and error I'm sure. But there is *one* way to determine it, if you have the $$. Fikse USA will custom make a set of rims. They have a data sheet you can fill out and they'll figure the rest out. I'm tempted to see how much it'll cost to be the first to fit 275s under the fenders of the X. Probably too much though :P