I used to have Yokohama C.Drive on my Subaru Impreza GTL – while just premium tyre and not pure sport tyre, it is great poor man’s sport tyre. It used to be used by track guys. It is surprisingly cheap and still have wet and dry grip close to sport tires.
There is lots of confusion and misunderstanding about tyres…and people want it all – cheap, high grip of racing tyres in wet and dry, better yet all season and lasting at least 200,000km as their beloved cars…man can always dream that’s the only FREE thing on this planet !!!
All car enthusiastic watch motorsport and if they are not blind they see various colors of tyres in F1 for example – violet, red, yellow for dry; intermediate green and wet blue. You can’t have all and it is always compromise. Sadly, we can’t pick one compound for daily driving unless you live somewhere where is no winter and rain whatsoever.
Simply as that Yokohama C.Drive 2 is compromise of dry sport tyre with focus to wet. Tyres focused for wet performance usually have wide circumferential grooves for water transport and tackling aqua-planning. Of course dry driving performance suffers and is usually accompanied by squeaking noises during hard cornering.
Combined with sport suspension on my car and spirited driving, it results in worn tires to inside from negative camber geometry and almost no chassis movements in joints/bushes…it all goes to tyre and surface baby as every motorsport fanatic want it !
I drive about 30,000km per year and I can count…I want to know how much my running cost are…If you have to change tyres every 1500km it is not fun I tell you – that’s why I don’t buy tyres under 70€ anymore because it doesn’t matter what mark you buy, they are all made in one factory from recycled PET bottles, old shoes and who knows what else…they are dangerous and in my case don’t last long.
On my light Fabia HR II I didn’t bother about summer tires at all…I used to use “winter” tire Continental WinterContact TS T800-850 – it was great all round tire for wet, dry and also for winter with some race skills. Unfortunately, Hilda HR I is different story…heavy 2.0 TDi FWD cars, which eats front tires as desert after lunch if driven to limit.
Bottom line
- any crap tyre under 70€ lasts 1500km and is dangerous
- Yokohama C.Drive 2 lasts 8000km with one front to rear tyre swap – with zero camber it may be more
- record 13,000km was made by great Yokohama Advan Neova AD08R
Choose wisely what do you need and how quickly you wish to die !!! Of course great tyre doesn’t make sense if you have worn suspension as most drivers on roads.
I’m always impressed by drivers who believe factory damper lasts forever (and who tests dampers on MOT these days?) – on third world roads as in Czech Republic (sadly, I still drive there to visit my parents) you get max. 20,000km on factory dampers just by daily driving and my parents whine about my bomb proof Fabia HR II suspension they inherited after me.
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