[2.4TSE]

The Nokian WR G2 NO 205/55x16 tyres and steel wheels have arrived from mytyres.com and been fitted today. I couldn't quite get my caliper gauge perfectly straight (it was a handful of degrees out as the arm was j u u u u u s t touching the wheel rim, but the spigot hole size I got was 63.35mm.

Each assembly was individually protected with cardboard and static wrap and apart from the delivery time it took – thanks to demand driven shortage – I’m very impressed. The steel wheels are of high quality and look identical to the Ford Focus standard fit 16” items that I nearly bought (but were £15 more, each, than the mytyres "derived" cost after removing tyre and delivery charges). Include that the mytyres cost includes valve, fitting, and balancing, and the saving is even greater.

The tyre balance is spot on and even the pressures were spot-on for the fronts, leaving me to bleed off a few PSI on the rears. Steering is still sharp, if not quite so sharp as on the P-Zeros, and on roads I know well the ride is a smidge bouncier, but the cold grip increase is impressive; second gear took nearly full throttle on a damp road with zero deg C air temperature whereas the still-plenty-of-tread P-Zero Rossos had scrabbled on barely half throttle an hour earlier on the same stretch of road.

Braking too is hugely better even before the tyres are bedded in; I had the car pretty well stood on its nose before ABS kicked in whereas that hour before it did so much sooner on the same road stretch.

Although I already knew that standard fit alloys are usually heavier than a same-size steel wheel would be, I was really struck by how much the difference actually was. I didn't weigh the wheel and tyre assemblies but it felt like the alloy assembly was a good kilo heavier.