Christian_Driver

I've just got hold of my first Impreza (MY98) as a company car (PHH being the lease company) as a 'hand-me-down' from a colleague.

What a great car! I've had it a few days now and it is by far the best car I've driven (certainly compared to the Golf 1.8T and Pug 306 gti-6 I've had previously).

First thing I did was check it over throughly, and I found that it has *3* Bridgestone Potenzas (on the front and driver-side rear) and a S02 Pole Position (on the passenger-side rear).

I'm not happy with having different tyres on the rear anyway out of principal, but it is certainly noticeable when accelerating out of tight-ish corners. Not good for the confidence when attempting to adjust to 4WD and 200+ bhp!!

My initial thoughts were it can't be great for the transmission having unbalanced levels of grip across the rear. I also know from my previous car (Golf Gti) that the tyre companies usually recommend on changing tyres in pairs (or at least that was the case with Michelin)...

On closer inspection it seems that both rears are also pretty worn, with the S02 PP at about 2mm and the Potenza at about 1.8mm. This seems like a good opportunity to get the tyre mismatch sorted.

However having experienced PHH's "service" previously, I am a bit concerned that they will do their usual and (a) only replace the Potenza and/or (b) put some other brand/compound of tyre on the rear again.

So my questions are:

* Are there any real technical reasons why they shouldn't mix tyres across the car?
* Should the tyres be the same on the front and the back of the car?

Any advise gratefully received!

Cheers,

Christian

mutant_matt

You should aim for all 4 tyres being matched, ideally all at the same time. There was a case where a set of PZero's were replaced (on a Scooby), 2 at a time and this introduced some "instabilities". It turned out to be that the two batches were made in different factories and when swapped for a set (of 4) matched tyres, this cured the problem.

Hope this helps,

Matt.

melpaul2002

just out of interest do u realise how much its costing you in tax each month, i got my 98 last wednesday also a company car ( lucky us )

we miss out on the 25 % reduction as not over 4 yrs old, also next year no discounts either as new tax emmission laws come in.

no reductions for over 2000 miles either.

guess what - our car is terrible in their eyes, think they scale it on 150 to 260 and ours comes in at 242,

still guess you must know all that.

boomer

Christian,

my Scooby is a Leasplan company car. When my front tyres came up for their first replacement, rather than call LP i called QwikFit Mobile directly (they did my previous tyres) to ask about same-make replacements. When the chappy arrived he told me that they MUST fit the original equipment, and the tread must not vary by more than a couple of mm.

Phew, i thought. OK the RE010's aren't brilliant, but they are far better than some Michelin ultra-high mileage re-cycled banana skins!

A lot will depend on the contract between your company and PHH though - sometimes the margins are shaved too far.

You should be able to get the same tyres all round on replacement - just hope that you can get a half decent brand!

mb

boomer

BTW,

if the available options seem stupid - KICK UP A FUSS!!! On one of my previous cars the lease company told me to swap a worn tyre with the spare (to save money). The spare was a SPACE SAVER tyre!!!! Stupid muppets!!!

Got my way in the end though

mb

Lee

I have one for a company car. I do over 18k a year so at the moment its a good perk. When the tax is based on emissions I guess it will be time to consider a different approach.

Our lease company recommend dunlop or pirelli. I managed to get 4 p-zero's out of them

when I've had tyre changes, it has always been all 4 wheels.

WillieF

AS someone in charge of running a small fleet of vehicles my tip would be to go to someone who will want to fleece the leasing company we use Kwik Fit as they seem to have have good agreements with the leasing companys and appear to be trusted by them.

They will do a check of the tyres and make a recommendation and *usually* if the tyres are close to the legal limit replace with what ever is recommended by the leasing company. I think PHH use pirelli/dunlop so go for some P-Zeros Good Luck