Little over a year ago, Goodyear introduced bowel-friendly fiber in the form of carbon into their touring tire with their Eagle, featuring Responsedge. Carbon never tasted so good. Fast forward a year, and they've taken all of the carbon fun in their ResponsEdge and literally doubled it with their action-packed sequel, the Eagle F1 All-Season. While the original offered only carbon on the outboard sidewall, the new F1 boasts carbon on both the outer and inner walls. That's right, the same stuff that F1 and other high-caliber race cars use-cough, my JGTC Supra, cough-the aptly-named F1 stuffs into a tire.
So what does the carbon do? Sure, space-age weaved fiber looks cool on the hood of a Civic, but what good does it do embedded in a tire where you can't even see it? Why, it reinforces the tire, silly. What may come as a shock is that carbon-besides sprucing up body panels-is actually stronger, stiffer and lighter than steel; plus, it has the added benefit of not corroding. It's been the engineer's closet Viagra, only less skin.
| Analyze This - Goodyear Eagle F1 All Season
Goodyear combined carbon's stanchioning principles and developed a tire with aggressive shoulder blocks and thick center rib, giving it ultra high-performance characteristics with thrown in turn- enhancing Tredlock technology. By applying their All-Season attributes (water-diverting Aquachutes), they've created a tire that outhandles the competition in dry or wet. And to prove it, Goodyear flew us out to hot and sticky Daytona Beach, FL to test the tire in the heart of NASCAR territory.
And test we did. We took the tire out and matched it against competitors in a trio of events: slalom, road course, and autocross. Not in a random parking lot either, but at the Daytona International Speedway. Cue campy Sega theme song: (www.secretspain.org/segaracingmp3s.html). Despite "Daaay-tooonaaaaaa, Let's go away" reverberating in my brain, I managed to push (nudge, really) the Eagle F1 to its rubbery limits and it kept begging for more. The reinforced sidewalls had a Tyrannosaurus Rex-like bite in turns. And with the Florida rains, we flogged the tire on wet tarmac half the time and the F1s whipped right back. Consistently, the Eagle F1s spanked the competitors like they were cheap and naughty, leaving deep, carbon-tinged scars on their treaded backs.
With 16- to 18-inch applications now available (up to dub diameters, soon), the next time you're looking for some All-Season tires with performance, think about adding some fiber to your diet. More fun than a hydrotherapeutic enema, let the Eagle F1s cleanse your automotive colon.
