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- 2017 Mazda CX-5 Touring
You are entitled to your opinions. However if you google "new tires front or rear", almost all tire manufacturers, retailers, tire experts, etc say new or best tires belong on the rear! Take a look at tirerack.com and here is Consumer Reports take: https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/car-parts-and-accessories/tire-safety/index.htmThat’s simply outrageous, you will not get the footprint of a 245 tire on a 7” rim. Just because something fits, doesn’t mean it fits well...
The best tires on the rear is a load of s*** and recommended by tire companies so you have to replace your tires more often. There was a very thorough thread somewhere on here where this was explained in depth.
ALL of your tires should have sufficient tread to reduce the chances of a skid, but these are FWD based vehicles. Many of you don’t even have AWD to begin with, meaning the fronts are steering, braking and accelerating while the rears just follow the front axle. Even with AWD, I believe this system simply stays FWD biased until they begin to lose traction. So why the hell would you want the rear tires, which do absolutely nothing to have more traction?
Obviously you want neither unless you are a driver capable of properly correcting a skid, but what would you rather have, oversteer which is predictable and gives you every chance in the world to correct your intended line and continue on, or watch as your car understeers toward the curb?
Obviously you want sufficient tread in the rear, but the better tires should ALWAYS be on the front unless you’re just trying to change your tires more often and satisfy the tire companies.
I think you misunderstand the concept of oversteer which you say is "predictable". Oversteer is loss of traction in the rear (aka fishtailing); this is dangerous and UNpredictable. This is the main reason you want higher coefficient of friction in the rear, especially in wet conditions.
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