Gripping stuff

‘My Momma always used to say, there’s an awful lot you can tell about a person by their shoes.’ Now Forrest Gump’s mum probably wasn’t a spanner twirling petrolhead, but if she were she’d no doubt say the same applied to the boots on your pride and joy. How do you think she’d feel seeing a BMW M-car or AMG Mercedes rolling on budget rubber? What does it say about the way it’s been kept, maintained and driven? Personally, I’d have to stagger away from the crime scene, seek out a darkened corner and think wholesome thoughts about sipe patterns and silica content.

Budget tyres aren’t just an offence against good sense, they’re also a menace to society – higher wear and emissions damaging both the environment and our health, and that’s before we even consider the avalanche of accidents across the country that could be attributed to them. An overstatement? When you consider that almost half of all tyres currently sold in the UK are no-name specials (45-52 per cent, depending on your source), consider again. Shockingly, my local tyre shop says it’s more like 85 per cent of their customers who plump for the cheapest option. And I’ll return to precisely how unsafe they are in certain scenarios shortly.

As you can probably tell, I’m a fervent evangelist for those black hoops forgotten by so many so often. But before I get so agitated about the perils of ditchfinders that I descend into rabidly speaking in tongues, let’s pull back and take a deep breath.