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Best wheel for handling on M3 2021 LR (18 vs 19" vs 19" aftermarket)

which wheels to get?


  • Total voters
    36
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Tires and coilovers are your best bet to move the car to a more BMW M-like experience. Aftermarket 18 or 19s would benefit looks but likely just add on cost unnecessarily if handling is your primary goal.
I agree.

If you want a bang for the buck handling improvement, I would proceed as follows:
A. *BEST* tires (whatever that means to your intended use);
B. Sway bars, coilovers OR lowering springs (intended use is important, again);
C. Reduce rotational mass and unsprung mass (to potentially go faster - everywhere - reduce mass - everywhere lol)

My two cents.

Remember, your feelings and thoughts go a long way into your perception of something, and how satisfied you will be with your chouce. Like the placebo affect. - If you want something that you are ultimately convinced is the best choice to realize your intentions, you will likely be most psychologically pleased by this choice. I know that I have occasionally convinced myself of things that are not true; I have seen that behavior in others, I think that is normal human behavior.

In short, I presented you with my opinion of the path I would take, to achieve the things I think matter most, relative to your expressed goal.

Is it objectively the best path? Is it the best path for you? I dunno.

Best of luck!
 
This is a great thread as it is very informative in regards to the difference of 18" and 19" wheels. I am surprised by the result of the poll, that 18" aero wheel had the more votes compare to the 19" sport wheel.

I didn't think that alot of people find the (2021) 19" sport wheel design would be unattractive and 18" wheels have alot of advantages in the track as well. I'm surprised though that there's not much model 3 owners letting go of their 19" sport wheel. (I'm just basing it at the for sale part of the forum)

about the OP, the most that made sense to me what SAM1 said was the 19" is about an inch wider that contribute to better handling.

IMHO: I believe 18" has alot of benefits for daily street driving and the draw back is not that stylish compare to bigger wheels. and 19" is more balanced in terms of still having good mileage, tires are not too expensive replace, and still stylish (ofcourse this highly depends on the design of the wheels).

I wonder if we can just install a wider tire on the 18" aero wheels if the handle will improve as good as the 19".
 
@jamesxtxt It makes sense that few people sell their 19" OE TM3 wheels. The 19s are a standalone option, very very few people are going to buy them who don't specifically want them.

That's in contrast with 20" M3P PUP wheels. You can't buy an M3P without them anymore, and even when you could maybe you wanted the other PUP upgrades anyways (most notably the brakes). So it makes sense to see lots of OE 20s getting ditched. Last but not least the 20s are the worst from a practicality and performance perspective, so there's more incentive to replace them than the 19s.
 
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I wonder if we can just install a wider tire on the 18" aero wheels if the handle will improve as good as the 19".
Every Model 3 comes with 235mm wide tires. The handling benefits of the larger OE wheels are entirely from the different tire models they come with, not from different sizing. The MXM4 tire that usually comes on the 18s is garbage for performance, it is focused heavily on efficiency and tread life.

Wheels do make some difference for handling, but there is no significant handling benefit to larger diameter. In fact it's mostly the other way - less rotating mass and more central rotating mass from smaller diameter wheels help handling (and efficiency) more than any detrimental effect from taller sidewalls. Good performance tires have stiff sidewalls that hold up perfectly well to very hard driving in 245/45 or 235/45.

Just to be clear, I'm only commenting on the range of wheel diameters that are typically used on a Model 3 (18"-20" wheel diameter with 26"-27" tire diameter), more extreme examples could be different. Among those Model 3 sizes there is zero real world performance benefit to larger wheel diameter, it's basically negative benefit. The only performance reason to go larger diameter is fitting very big aftermarket brakes that don't fit inside any 18" wheels, and that's only worth considering for a track car.

Note I say this from experience changing wheel diameter on multiple cars including downsizing my M3P to 18x8.5" wheels.

I'll also say that 19" is perfectly fine for most if you like the look better and don't mind the extra cost. Whereas 20" is a very aesthetic-focused choice to greater detriment of handling bad pavement and even more expensive tire costs. (I'm not down talking anyone for preferring 20s. If they want to prioritize aesthetics that's totally their choice!)
 
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I'll add one more point of clarification since this came up in another thread that may have been poking fun at my response here. ;)

What I wrote above is advice for street driving, up to and including very fast paced twisty mountain/canyon road runs. I don't think anyone is asking about track use in this thread.
 
Yes. Intended use is important!

Some people drive a street car on the track. Some people drive a race car (unlawfully - sometimes) on the streets.

If you want to street, but you want uncompromised performance, buy the best performing parts. Anytime someone says that you are compromising too much with your upgrades, you can exclaim the following - with great pride:

"Because Racecar!"

=D
 
so tires are much more important than size of wheels for improving handling?
Yup absolutely.

I had a loaner M3LR AWD with AB recently with the OEM 235/45R18 Michelin Primacy MXM4 tires. They were just at terrible performing as I remembered from trying them on our Model S once.

The 245/45R18 UHP allseasons I have on our M3P right now are vastly better. The 245/45R18 "max performance" summer tires I was using previously were that much better still (but inappropriate for freezing winter weather, of course).

The MXM4 are very efficient, I will give them that. They don't really have anything else going for them. On our Model S I remember thinking they were also decently quiet but on this M3LR they seemed louder than my UHP allseasons. Our 2021 Model 3 is overall quieter than that 2020 loaner though.
 
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