How To Read Your Tyre

Have you ever spent any decent amount of time thinking about the tyres on your car? Probably not, right? But don’t feel guilty: most people couldn’t even name the brand of tyre they have fitted to their vehicle.

As motorists, we have a strange relationship with tyres. Attentive motorists might have the pressure checked at least once a week while others might just have a local dealer give them a once-over before setting off on the annual holiday. For the most part, they tend to get ignored until one or all need to be replaced and suddenly you find yourself at the mercy of a salesman who might as well be speaking French...

“What profile are you looking at, sir?”

“Well, I was looking at my Twitter profile, but I haven’t checked my Facebook profile since this morning, so I might as well look at that.”

At this point the salesman has probably figured out you simply want a set of round rubber pieces that will keep the car rolling forwards. A dodgy salesman might take advantage of said situation, so educating yourself is a worthwhile endeavour.

Luckily, they’re quite easy to understand. All those letters and numbers on the sidewall mean something, but since the space on a tyre is rather limited, the manufacturers can’t very well print entire paragraphs on them. It’s worth noting, however, that all of the major tyre manufacturers offer complete guides on their websites.

The key to understanding – and then choosing – the right tyre boils down to decoding the bits of information you get.

For the purposes of this article, we’ll use 205/55 R16 91V as an example.

This series of numbers and letters may seem daunting but it gives you all the basic information you need. Decode this and you’re halfway to being a tyre expert.