Miata Mailing List: December 1994, Message #15
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   From: "Alex Little ((919) 254-5038)" 
Subject: More on tires
   Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 11:02:43 -0500

> I see lots of complaints about the original Bridgestone tires on
> Miatas and was wondering if I'm the only one whose car came with
> Yokohomas. Granted the tread was so soft that they only lasted 22,000
> miles, but they were good while they lasted. I eventually replaced
> them with Yokohama AVS-Intermediates and like these even more. BTW,
> these Bridgestonse sound worthless. I'll make sure I never buy any of
> those.

When I bought my miata in '89, all 3 packages came with one of 3
types of tires:  the Bridgestone SF-325, Yokahama A???, and Dunlop ???
tires (can't remember the exact series numbers for the last two).
I got the Bridgestones on my A model..

A reliable and knowledgeable source told me that during the development
of the Miata, Dunlop spent a bunch of money developing a tire for the
Miata (not uncommon for tire companies to do this for a new model
because they get on most, if not all, of the cars sold), but once Dunlop
had all the specs detailed, Mazda gave(sold?)  the info to Bridgestone
and Yokahama in order to get other tire suppliers for the car --
advantage Mazda.

The person telling me this also strongly impled that Dunlop got the
shaft in this deal because they spent the development bucks, but
didn't get on most of the cars; my informal survey of miata tires a few
years ago indicated that most (60%) of the US Miatas had Bridgestones,
with about an even 20% for both Yokahama and Bridgestone (rough guess
numbers).  Wheel type didn't seem to matter too much, although it seemed
that a car with base wheels was more likely to have Yokahama tires.
Of course, these data only apply for US miatas & I haven't paid much
attention to what's on them these days.

Alex Little
Raleigh, NC

PS
A local tire dealer told me that many of these special series tires for
particular models are crap because they are often built to be ultra low
cost (His opinion -- I just know the ones I got were lousy.)  He said
that it's not uncommon to get poor performance from OE tires on low cost
cars.  And, even though it didn't seem like it when I signed the papers,
the Miata is a low cost car.