Review: ADVAN AD08 Tires

So I'm one of a handful of people who have put very high grip tires on a Prius. I've put near 35,000 miles on these tires over the course of ~3 years and I figured I'd make a debrief post since it's time to replace them.

Here's my setup:
- Prius Touring
- Mounted on 16x6 RAYS CE28N Eco Drive
- Stock suspension settings (for 95% of the use of the tires) and the car rides at stock height
- Tire size: 205/55/16
- Inflation range from 40-45 PSI

First, I'll make one thing very clear: these are not tires for people who desire maximum MPG out of their car. The MPG hit with these tires mounted is significant - I average 41.5 MPG on these tires vs the 43 MPG with Nokian Hakkapellitta R snow tires and 46 MPG I got with stock Turanza EL400 LRR tires.

With that out of the way, I have to say that putting these tires on the car completely transforms the way the car rides and handles. Steering becomes relatively heavy compared to stock, making the car feel substantial and solid. Inputs go from lazy to immediate. The ride

On the highway at 70mph (and a track going even faster), the chassis goes from econobox to, well, German. On stock tires, it feels like pushing a amusement park go-kart to the limits of its performance envelope. The car felt like it was wandering in the lane, gusts of wind would push it around hard enough to concern family pets riding with me. Passengers would suggest that maybe we should stick to the minimum posted speed limit.

With the ADVANs, the car felt present, planted on the road. 70mph seems trivial, a transitional stage to much much higher speed. It even rides a little like my other car, a Lancer Evolution IX (not necessarily surprising since stock tires on that car are the very similar ADVAN A046). Cornering improved dramatically - I only wish I had gone on a skidpad to see how hard the car would corner. Friends with (often substanitally) modified cars, ranging from boosted Civics to modded 911s asks the same question when I turn a corner at speed: "This is a Prius? What the ---- did you do to it?" There are tradeoffs made to gain the responsiveness and grip other than the MPG loss; the difference in sidewall rigidity means that the ride isn't as smooth and you feel every expansion joint and crack in the road. The sizing of my tires changes the ride height of the car ever so slightly, but enough to make me scrape the front of the car quite a bit more than stock. Also, you have to worry about keeping the tires above ~20 degrees F, which is a bigger pain than you would think when it's transition time between summer and winter tires (there were quite a few days where the high was in the 60s and low in the 20s inland).

My next tire: probably the Dunlop Direzza Z1 Star Spec