FSP 1.1

Faceted Tire Search

Tires can be classified by:
performance group:	egs., snow, all-season, high performance-dry
speed rating:	egs., V, W, Z
price:	eg., < $US 120 each
size of tire:	eg., 215-45-16
tires which fit a given size of wheel:	eg., 16 x7J
brand:	eg., Pirelli

It is very common that a customer already has a set of road
wheels, and wants to know what choice of tires work on these
wheels.

No tire model is available in all sizes.
Various sizes of tire will fit and function well for a particular wheel.

TireRack is the foremost online tire retailer.
However, customers cannot group and sort TireRack's tires
using just any of the above classifications.

For example, a customer may wonder,

I've got a 16 x6.5 inch wheel, what's the best performance
tire that fits my wheel ?

TireRack.com cannot answer this question. Here's an exchange
which sheds some light on this predicament:

Customer Says:
Please make it easy to search for a tire by brand!
I'm not a large customer of yours having only bought
six or eight sets of tires from tirerack in the last few
years. But my impression is that each evolution of
your web site makes it harder for one to search for
a specific tire by brand.

Tonight I'm looking for some Michelin Sport Cup's.
Can't even find a way to drill down from products to
sizes so I can make an appropriate choice. I want to
know exactly what sizes are available for the product
I want. I don't know the sizes that are available in
the tire I'm going to buy, but I am going to buy a
set and it would be really helpful if I didn't have to
start with a bogus entry about tire size.

Certainly those of us that make our tire choices based
on size and type of tire are limited group but I'll bet we
buy more tires than your average consumer. And I bet
we buy tires that are sold at a higher margin.

Another customer writes:

Actually the problem is searching by type. I have yet to
figure out a way to (for example) search for all max performance
tires. The old web site allowed you to do this, but now the
process seems to be to pick a size, then drill down through
the selection guide. If you want to know if other tires
are available in a slightly different size you need to
start over and do a trial and error search, or else search
all brands separately to see if they offer a tire in that
category.

Vendor replies:

Searching for wheels by size and bolt pattern is not
on our site.

Our wheel fitment database is pretty comprehensive,
at least for street applications on stock or mildly modified
vehicles. We've found that the vast majority of customers
wanting to search by size or bolt pattern are wanting
to work far outside the practical boundary (not that racers
would), and are trying to find a fitment that doesn't have
proper load capacity, clearance, hub-centricity, etc.
Inevitably, their next question is always, "do you sell
adapters...?"

We do have the ability to provide this sort of info
over the phone. I would recommend calling Dan (ext. 294)
or Bruce (ext. 289), and tell them what you're looking for
and trying to fit. They can help with this sort of info.

And if you're really working off the menu, we do have
the Kosei K1s in a handful of "blanks", that we can have
CNC machined to your specific bolt pattern and centerbore.
Also, for several of the popular lightweight wheel
lines we carry, we usually publish the list of diameters,
widths and weights in our Grassroots Motorsports ad.
This may give you a good starting point at least.

-John "Woody" Rogers
Product Information Specialist
The Tire Rack

[From the Evo-discussion list.]

Posted by dc at December 31, 2002 11:52 PM | TrackBack