Basic Overview:
This review has been on hold for about a year now, as I’ve never really had the patience to sit down and write an opinion that you’ve more then likely read somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-BILLION times over on Miata.net's Tire forum.
But as the old saying, if you’re human, you have an opinion, so here’s mine in all it’s illiterate and ugly detail for you to dissect and mull over like the leg of a frog in your 10th grade biology class.
The T1-R is just a slightly revised version of Toyo's highly successful
T1-S tire, just with reinforced sidewalls and two new sets of tread blocks running along the outer edges of the tread face.
I got a little over 13,800 miles on my set of T1-Rs in the 195/55/14 size. By the time they rolled onto the 13,000-mile mark, they were worn down to an even 2/32nds of tread across the entire tire, though the ultimate grip levels began to fall off some 2,000 miles before I hit the wear bars.
Handling Description:
All-out grip in the dry is a few notches below the Azenis 615, but will easily best anything out there with an M+S rating on its sidewall.
As a commuter tire that requires some level of sporty performance by its driver, the T1-R is a pretty good all around tire.
The sidewall is a bit on the soft side as a performance tire goes, but this leads to gradual and predictable break-away characteristics at the limits, which can translate into long sustained tail-swinging drifts for anyone who is used to balancing the Falken Azenis on the limit for long periods of time.
This gradual and predictable handling balance does however come at the expense of precious turn-in response, but dialing in your steering lock a little sooner will help counter some of that lost response.
The soft sidewalls also give the car a ride and noise level comparable to any luxury tire on the market (at least in the 195/55/14 size anyway.)
So while it may not have the overall cornering grip or the high levels of steering response of the Falken Azenis, you will get a much quieter and far more comfortable ride in your daily commute.
Wet weather grip is really where these tires shine. They do a better job of resisting hydroplaning in a heavy downpour, and the all-out wet pavement grip is roughly the same as the Azenis 615s.
Disadvantages and issues:
It’s really hard to fault this tire if it’s used for its intended purpose as a sporty commuter tire.
I never bothered to autocross these, as I knew they were going to be slower then the stickier/sharper Azenis by a pretty good bit, so I used them strictly on the street.
As I’ve already mentioned, the lack of turn-in is pretty evident, but turning in sooner can help alleviate some of that turn-in slop the tire exhibits, and the trade-off in ride quality over the Azenis is a big plus for anyone who loves a good riding tire or drives on bum roads to and from work everyday.
So I’m not going to count the soft sidewalls as a fault, however I simply can’t overlook two very glaring and prominent issues I had with these tires.
1: the mileage of 13,800 I got from them was absolutely ridiculous. Especially for a tire that was being touted as being able to last LONGER then the track oriented Azenis (my last set of Azenis reached 2/32nds at 14,000 miles, and went completely dead around 17,000 miles.)
The tire had reached the 2/32nds mark at 13,800, but by that point, they had long given up the grip they once had, and were suffering from hydroplane issues in the smallest of downpours (ironically, my Azenis seem to do better in the wet at 2/32nds and will out-grip the T1-R by a significant margin in the dry and wet.)
2: around the 3/32nds of tread mark, the tires got really loud. Almost Azenis 215 loud. For a while, I thought a wheel bearing was about to fail because of the constant drone at highway speeds.
As a commuter/touring tire for the novice/average driver, these tires are good all-around performers.
For the serious performance enthusiast who demands sharp turn-in response coupled with more ultimate grip, look to the Falken Azenis 615 instead.