Ronald Romano
09-24-2009, 05:14 AM
Four months ago when our Mercedes-Benz C220 CD! long-term test car arrived we had but one issue with the car - its tyres weren't in the best shape (which, to be honest, was down to our handling evaluations at the Aamby Valley airstrip). But since we'd planned, right from the outset, to put the Merc through a track day at the MMST in Chennai, a set of extreme performance Advan NEOVA ADO? was sourced from Yokohama. We maintained the same OE tyre size so as not to lose out on the excellent ride quality of the Merc and the only difference to comfort we noticed was a slight increase in road noise.
As we mentioned in our previous long-term reports the tyres immediately impressed us with their grip levels. The Merc is a soft car and tends to roll a bit when cornered hard. Earlier that roll used to be accompanied by gentle understeer but with the new tyres the car could carry far greater mid-corner speed without any loss in feedback or consistency.
5338
Cross the threshold and she'd break progressively delivering enough warning at the limit. More impressive was grip in the wet which is seriously good.
Since these are high performance tyres we hadn't set very high mileage targets for it; our expectation was one track day and that's it. But the picture you see, that's the tyre after a whole day's howling around the track. There is still enough life left in it for another 15-20,000km. Out on the race track, the lasting memory is of how difficult it was to get her unstuck from the rear. We had to be mega aggressive with speeds and steering to get her tail to slide and that's a telling comment on the tyres' grippiness.
As we mentioned in our previous long-term reports the tyres immediately impressed us with their grip levels. The Merc is a soft car and tends to roll a bit when cornered hard. Earlier that roll used to be accompanied by gentle understeer but with the new tyres the car could carry far greater mid-corner speed without any loss in feedback or consistency.
5338
Cross the threshold and she'd break progressively delivering enough warning at the limit. More impressive was grip in the wet which is seriously good.
Since these are high performance tyres we hadn't set very high mileage targets for it; our expectation was one track day and that's it. But the picture you see, that's the tyre after a whole day's howling around the track. There is still enough life left in it for another 15-20,000km. Out on the race track, the lasting memory is of how difficult it was to get her unstuck from the rear. We had to be mega aggressive with speeds and steering to get her tail to slide and that's a telling comment on the tyres' grippiness.