A couple of weeks ago, I made a post about a recent Motor Trend test of the Lincoln MKZ lineup. In that post, I suggested that the testing itself was hurting Lincoln's image. The vast majority of the review was about performance numbers and that doesn't seem to be what Lincoln is after so, naturally, Lincoln cars don't put down numbers you can brag about. They're simply adequate. That doesn't necessarily mean they are bad cars though. For example, if someone were to take a Rolls Royce Phantom Coupe and compare its performance to a new Corvette Stingray Z51, the Phantom would come up really short. In reality, the Phantom Coupe is very far from bad or even average. It's simply not a performance car. In fact, it's so far from a performance car and offers so much more luxury and brand prestige than a Corvette that they would never be cross shopped, but you get the point. If you use the Corvette yardstick, the Rolls Royce would come up short. The opposite ...
2012 Boss 302 on square 305/30/19 RE-71R's at AMP - Graham MacNeil © For better or for worse, I have heard and read so much about RE-71R's. Everyone swears by the grip but complains about the wear. Generally speaking, the pros are: 1. They grip as well or better than most R comps. 2. They don't wear as quickly as R comps if driven occasionally on the street. 3. They work better in the rain than R comps. The cons were limited to overheating quickly when used on track (being an autocross tire) and wearing too fast on heavy cars like mine. In the popular 200 TW category, they are faster than the popular Hankook RS-4's and BFGoodrich Rival S's according to published Tire Rack Tests. According to plenty of reviews, they are also faster than well established R comps like R888R's (which don't seem to work too well on heavy cars anyway) and the venerable NT01's. But I was still hesitant for a while until I talked to a tire tech support gentleman...