Perfect! Thanks again for the feedback my friend. I really appreciate it.

 

All right if you want straight facts from first hand experience I'll give you my. First off I've had 20's for two years and now have 19's for 6 months. On the 20's I had 255/30/20 and 295/25/20. On my 19's I have 255/35/19 and 295/30/19. There are a few huge things that are different between the two. 1st gas mileage is much better with the 19's. Second ride quality is 100% noticeably better. When I say better I can drive my car normally without worrying about swerving around pot holes, divots, and sewer curves up ahead. 3rd My car doesn't feel like a tank and is much quicker and smother around turns. Overall performance is much better. To a point I feel like I have a sports sedan again and not a tank. 4th I feel much more confident about driving to the city and on roads I've never been on. 5th with 19's I can run much wider rims and tires than on 20's. The people on here that tell you go with 20's and run oversize side walls 245/35/20 and 275/30/20 are not telling you that your car will look wack. It will sit significantly higher, so your Dinan suspension will look like stock suspension due to the car being raised an inch or so. Another thing that will change is your speed odometer. Your car overall will loose some sporty side to it in more ways than one. Your tire sizes will be limited and your always going to play a game going back and forth on the tire size you'll get next. If you get 19's with an 11'' rear you'll be able to run a 295 easily or even a 305. 19'' also allow you to run a more aggressive low offset wheels. Basically there is more play with 19's allowing you to lower and run a more aggressive set up. The worst decision I ever made with my car was getting 20's. Thank god I have 19's now. I love them. Would never ever buy 20's on a sport sedan again. Please man there is a reason BMW goes with 19'' as the stock option on the sport package for our cars.


Andrew

 

See this is the kind of feedback I am looking for as well. Thank you. My greatest fear is that since it is and always HAS been in my "head" that 19" is the proper setup for my car then I will always "feel" that way when I drive it. Your use of the word "tank" hits me pretty hard because that is what I envision as well. I like my Dinan drop and don;t want to lose that look. It is "just enough" to look sporty for me.

What do you mean when you are talking about "not swerving",etc?

Hey thanks again. I am not so sure again. Leaning back towards the 19" now...

 

OK, that is not true at all. My speedometer needed no adjustment since the rolling diameter is still within 3%. Second, my fuel economy may have been affected, but only minimally - even with 20's I got 35 mpg on a highway run from LA to Vegas, something even a Prius would struggle to do at 85-90 mph the whole way. Third, if you are buying quality wheels you have to worry a lot less, they should be strong enough to take everyday driving (mine are), do I slow for big dips? Yes. Big bumps? Yes. However, that is no different than I had to when I had 19's, this was more a side effect of having a lowered car more so than the wheel size. I can run 295/25's as well with the only issue being if I have people in the back seat. Also, the beauty of coilovers is that they are fully adjustable, so my ride height today is noticeably lower than when I had 19's with H&R springs. My car feels nothing like a tank, again the coilovers more than made up for any loss in handling.

 

To illustrate my point, notice the evolution:
Pic 1 - 19's with stock suspension


Pic 2 - 19's with H&R's



Pic 3 - 20's with coilovers

Not exactly a 4x4, now is it? Nuff said

 

All these pictures and examples are very good points and examples. However you're making your point with coilovers into consideration for the 4x4 status and ride height. He does not have coilovers. You also live in SoCal where the roads are perfect. Have you ever had snow, rain showers for two days, flooding, ice, etc. uuummm no All these effect road condition and make roads shitty in pot holes and random divots in roads. 2nd your mpg won't be affected on highways. Were will you see the biggest difference? Stop and go driving. Look Cold list. From everything you've told us your car is built for speed, quickness, and acceleration. It's a 550 don't make it a chevy impala by running 25/30 series tires. That might be a stretch but 25 series rubber band tires look. Everyone I know has tolled me the 19's look like a better fit for my car than the 20's did. Trust me go with comfort and performance vs. an inch bigger concave look. If we all lived in SoCal than 20's all day everyday. Another exemption would be lip wheels, they normally look smaller. But your concave 19'' will look perfect.

 

Basically with the 20's I had to completely avoid everything on the road. With 19's I have a lot more freedom to talk on my phone, change a CD, station, talk with my passenger. I don't feel stressed driving. It's hard to explain. Just have to do it for yourself to know and build an opinion. Even the almighty M5 came with 19's out of production. BMW put a larger side wall by +5 on the M5 compared to standard e60. Why didn't they increase the rim size? Im sure they had there reasons for doing so. Why wouldn't they put the same side wall -width tire size like the 550i sport has on the M5 with 20's stock. haha

 

Just to clarify...what size tires are you running? HRE is telling me to go 255/30/20 and 285/25/20. Since the sidewall will be stiffer it will ride worse (according to them). However, they say the 20 is the way to go. the P43SC is actually about 5 lbs lighter than the 172 OEM so acceleration should be offset in terms of inertia because of weight. It is responsiveness and quickness in turns that will suffer slightly but grip will be awesome.

 

One thing that will not change is the height of the car. Since the sidewall height (ie: 30,25) is a percentage of overall width of the tire. If I go with 285/25/20 then the ride height will actually be almost EXACTLY the same (w/in a 10th of an inch). The appearance will be of more wheel and less tire and the fill of the wheel well the same.Man you got me thinking though. I am a "driver".

 

LOL, by your same reasoning, why has BMW chosen to put 20's on the new 5 series - including the M5? They also previously chose to put run flat tires on the E60's which gave them all a crappy ride as well, somehow the run flats are absent on the F10 M5. SoCal has far from perfect "pristine" roads you imagine, this ain't the land of milk and honey. But if you're going to spend your whole life worried then why bother modding at all? Get a decent set of OEM 17's and be done with it. I'd rather take the risk than yawn every time I look at my car. Trust me, potholes, dips and railroad track don't exactly keep me up at night. The imagined performance/handling/ride losses are no more than that, imaginary, are you seriously going to tell me that my 20's w/275/30/20 tires weigh enough to kill the "sportiness" of my car as compared to 19's with 305/30/19's on it? Are we thinking tires don't weigh anything? Also, tires those wide would have a MORE negative effect than slimmer tires on 20's - simply because of rotational mass. My rotational mass is more centered towards the hub of the wheel making it more ideal, 19's with huge tires on them would have the rotational mass (those huge tires) around the edge of the wheel creating a more negative effect than the 20's do