Tires NANKANG or DEXTER

I had a set of Nankang NS-25 UHP tires on my mazda 3 turbo sedan. They were great tires and handled really well. Got about 30k miles out of them. I was pretty pleased, they even did alright in snow.

So to create some perspective, my AR1’s on a small light car (Miata), lasted for 5 track days. Assuming an average of 20 mins per session, and around four sessions in morning and four in afternoon, we can assume I’m doing around 160 minutes or driving per day. So in theory I put 13 hours on those tyres!

I’ve used Nankang plenty of times on my older cars, they were fine. Drove fine in wet, drove fine in dry, no louder than any other tires.

I think it really depends on the car. A fresh set of 13” AR-1 will last 2000-3000km on track on my dad’s Caterham.

I ran Ns2R on my R32 for a couple years and have no complaints.

I ran a set of NS2's years ago, they came on my B5.5 Passat. Grip wise they were acceptable in the dry, and pretty poor in the rain. Alot of my customers also ran them back then. I've never seen anything akward happen to one, no sidewall bubbles, blowouts, or failures. They aren't unsafe or bad tires, they were just always at the bottom of their category in terms of performance, refinement, grip, so I never considered buying a set. If my hands were tied in terms of availability, I would feel perfectly comfortable running Nankangs, especially on an application like a Figaro. I would go for it.

I swapped out the primacy's with nankang ns-20s and I feel like the car is less responsive. For instance, when quickly changing lanes on the freeway I feel like the ride is more spongy. They're way better for traction, but I feel less agile.

I have Nakang NS2 in the front of my Alfa Romeo Brera. The Brera demands a lof of from front tires, they wear pretty well and have pretty decent grip (not great).

The thing is, you may like or not like, they have a soft construction. So you are more on the confortable side, but roll a bit more on corners and give you less steering feedback than a better tire like Michelin PSS.

I ran Nankangs for a while, they were fine as long as it was dry, which it is only 10% of the time here. Slipped in slides all over in the wet.

Friends have run these, they are outright terrible in all respects.