My new 15″ AMG Penta wheels did not come with tyres. Choosing a set turned out to be a lot more complicated than I thought.
The big downside of the 15s over the 16s is the tyre availability. The table below outlines possible sizes I could have considered. They are all compared to the overall circumference of the original wheel/tyre combination.
| Tyre Size | Revs per KM | Difference |
|---|---|---|
| 205/70 R14 | 496 | Standard |
| 205/65 R15 | 492 | +0.8% |
| 205/60 R15 | 508 | - 2.4% |
| 215/65 R15 | 482 | + 2.8% |
| 215/60 R15 | 498 | - 0.4% |
| 225/60 R15 | 489 | + 1.2% |
| 225/55 R15 | 506 | - 2.4% |
| 235/55 R15 | 498 | - 0.4% |
The easiest and most obvious choice would have been one of the 205 sizes. Both are a fairly standard tyre size still used by many mainstream cars. As an example, 205/65R15 is the standard size of the later R107 models with 15″ wheels. I have the Michelin Energy XM2 tyre on my 560SEL in this size and it seems like a good tyre.
However, for the AMG wheels I wanted something wider with a bit more grip. Certainly, looking at old AMG catalogs, they mostly offered the wheels with wider tyres. I was immediately able to rule out two sizes – 225/55 and 235/55. There were no tyres at all available in those sizes.
The next most obvious size would have been 215/60R15. This is only 0.4% different to standard, so had the least speedometer impact. However, when looking for tyres in this size, the availability of anything I would want to use was terrible. There were some light truck/van tyres available, but they would have given the 450SLC a terrible ride. There was one model that looked promising at first – the Radar Dimax classic tyre. This tyre is advertised as specifically designed for classic use. While I didn’t find any reviews of their classic tyre, I found pretty poor reviews of Radar tyres in general. I couldn’t find anyone who had tried these tyres at all, let alone liked them.
Finally, I settled on 225/60R15. These seemed closest to the size AMG would have used then new for 15″ AMG Penta wheels. I was able to verify with somebody who used this size with Penta wheels on a 450SLC, which gave me confidence.
The tyre selection was not great in this size either, but there were a few options. In the end I went with the Hankook Kinergy Eco2 K435. The Eco2 name put me off a bit, as I assumed they were probably optimized for long tread life and fuel consumption vs performance. However, they got by far the best reviews I could find in that size. It also helped that there was a buy three, get four deal on at the time.
The tyres are now mounted and ready to go on the car. I also have the correct centre caps ready. The 450SLC is about to go in and have the front subframe mounts changed, so I’ll fit the new tyres after that.
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