HankLloydRight
No Roads
In typical Internet style, you seem to not be reading my entire argument. I never said staggered rims make no difference, I've said all along, that only at the extremes of performance might they make a perceivable difference for professional drivers who can actually tell a difference. Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren and every other supercar with staggered rims are designed for high-speed, ultra-high performance on ultra-high-performance tires, on dedicated, banked racetracks or roads that can actually handle that kind of traction and/or sustained speeds greater than 100mph (think Autobahn). Very few roads like that exist in the U.S., and even fewer (if any) where it's legal to drive street cars at such sustained speeds.
With respect to Elon Musk, who owned and totalled a McLaren F1, if you read the Ashley Vance biography of EM, you'll learn that he loved pushing these cars to their limits, and during one billionaire moment, he called up his billionaire friends also with million dollar supercars, and rented out an airport to go race each other. At those speeds, in those cars, under those circumstances, yes, staggered wheels probably make a marginal difference in handling and cornering. So just because EM says staggered rims make a difference, you still have to put that in full perspective. Did they take a Model S with and without staggered rims on the test track and calculate or measure a difference? Probably. Do regular Model S drivers on regular roads ever approach those sustained, high-speed, closed test-track conditions? Almost never.
It's almost as old as the auto industry itself, and it still holds true today as it did 60 years ago:
"Win on Sunday, sell on Monday."
(Bob Tasca Sr. circa 1960s)
(Bob Tasca Sr. circa 1960s)
BMW, while it makes fantastic cars, is in actuality a marketing company selling a brand and an image. If the ultra-performance supercars have staggered rims, that certainly would make the BMW brand image of "Ultimate Driving Machine" even more desirable.. afterall, if supercars and race cars have staggered rims, then by golly, we have to put them on BMWs too. Bottom line - it sells more cars. If you read all the car forums (as I do), you'll see that most people get staggered rims specifically for bragging rights, and in reality, they make very little (i.e. no) difference to the average American driver on average American roads. If you track your car a lot, or live in Germany and can regularly drive the unrestricted Autobahn and need that extra ounce of handling, then by all means, go for it.
BMW doesn't stop at staggered rims either. The stock spoiler on the E39 M5 is tiny (see below). does anyone actually think this spoiler creates any downforce to affect real grip or traction, or change in drag? (BTW, the Tesla spoiler has a similar effect). It's entirely just for show, and to differentiate the M5 from the regular Series 5 sedan (among several other subtle M5 cues). Just like staggered wheels do.
And in addition, if you do the research, staggered rims actually increase understeer, which means the steering is slightly less responsive to steering inputs, not more. All that staggered tires do is add a tiny bit of lateral traction in turns, at the extreme edge of adhesion (when the tires start to squeal), over a narrower tire in the exact same scenario (holding all other factors constant). Steering (which is different from cornering) has very little to nothing to do with the increased performance of staggered wheels -- except of course where the front rims are significantly smaller in diameter to the rear wheels. The Delorean DMC-12 (which I owned for 15 years) had 14"x6" rims in the front, and 15"x8" rims in the back. The front tires were 195mm and the rears 235mm -- a difference of 40mm -- twice the Tesla stagger. That is a significant stagger, which affected handling and steering. (side note: You think finding tires for the Tesla stagger is limited, try finding matching tires for those rims.)
I have no personal bias. I did have a staggered setup on my P85+, but I swapped the rear 9" rims with 8.5" rims so it's now a square setup (still 21" rims). @linkster can back me up on this, as he met me to swap his 8.5" turbine rims for my 9" turbine rims. Same day, same tires (PS2s before I replaced them with Hankooks), same car, same suspension, same roads, same weather. When we were done with the wheel swap, I drove home several hours specifically looking for any perceptible differences in handling or performance. I could detect absolutely no difference on the highways and backroads I tested both setups on that day.
The only reason I did the swap was because I wasn't going to spend $500 per tire* to replace the crappy Michelin PS2s which are very harsh, loud, fast-wearing tires, despite the successful marketing they've done to support such a fanboy price point. They are really $200 tires plus $300 of marketing expense. There are several better, cheaper, and higher-performing tires that did cost less than half of the PS2s at the time. If there were lots of other choices of tires that fit the staggered setup*, I'd just buy those and not worry about it.
But to your point, I've owned several BMWs in my life**, and currently own two, both of which have staggered wheels. My 2002 E39 M5 has an even more staggered setup with 245mm in the front, and 275mm in the rear (30mm stagger). But in the case of the M5, the number of options of affordable replacement ultra-performance summer tires is huge -- on Tire Rack I see 25 different options for staggered HP summer performance tires, where the Tesla setup only shows 4. The other BMW we own is my wife's 2009 335i Convertible. That car also has a 30mm stagger with summer tires. But seriously, who's going to take a hard-top convertible, with all that extra weight of the hardtop, as well as with the weakened body structure, to the track and to the extremes of handling, where staggered wheels would actually make any difference. Nobody. So why sell it that way? Well, it's the "Sport" model, and staggered wheels sounds very "sporty" over other competitors hard-top convertible sport coupes.
* The PS2 prices have dropped significantly since 2014 when I got my P85+. Back then, they were $500 each and there were no alternative matching tires that fit the staggered setup. Now there are a few options in the $350 range, which is still quite expensive compared to the 21"x8.5" square offerings, which include the Hankook Ventus V12 evo2s, my personal favorite at this time.
** It wasn't very long ago I would tell people that the only cars I would ever buy the rest of my life would be BMWs, and that I'd never, ever, be convinced to buy an American-made car. Then Tesla came along. It also wasn't very long ago my wife and I were planning on doing the BMW factory delivery option and picking up a new BMW in Germany, driving around Europe for a month, and then dropping it off at the port to be shipped home. Then Tesla came along and killed that plan as well.
