Today at Atelier Kaz - ex-Honda R&D, F1, Indy/CART engineer

I have now covered about 4k miles on Advan Neova AD-08.


I’m using OEM 16/17in wheels so the tyre size is 215/45/16 and 245/40/17.


I have Type-S suspension and I use my own alignment setup so following comment may not be the case for you especially if you are using wider tyres.


OEM tyre width is somehow quite narrow considering the characteristic and the spec of our NSX.


Long time ago, I was told that due to Honda’s internal design regulation, any Honda cars must be able to fit the snow chain and as a result, even the NSX had to take this into consideration and thus, ended up with that fairly narrow tyre width.


Probably another reason why we have such a big gap at the wheel arch and also the wheel face is somewhat pushed inside the arch due to its offset.


In fact, in the NSX accessory catalogue, there was indeed a snow chain available for our NSX.


Because of this narrow tyre width, chassis weight distribution and tyre profile, it requires really stiff side shoulder on the tyre to meet the chassis setup of our NSX.


This is why the OEM tyre had such a stiff shoulder.


This is not the case if you are using the aftermarket wheel with wider tyre.

You can achieve similar effect by choosing the right profile with wider width and customise the handling to your taste.


Tyre fitter didn’t like these OEM tyres especially the BS Rear ones as they were really stiff that normally, two people were required to mount or even remove the tyre to/from the rim.


Not great when they were so busy with lots of customers waiting…



My view towards the tyre is the same for many years and confirmed it again after testing several NSX with OEM tyres last year in Japan.


For the OEM wheel, I still feel OEM tyres would be my first choice even they were designed more than 20 years ago.


In Japan, we can still get hold of these OEM tyres although the lead time could be a long one.



Over the past 17 years with 131k miles, I went through lots of tyres including many OEM BS/Yokohama models, BS aftermarket ones, GY GSD3, Toyo T1-R, etc and also had several opportunities to test drive more than 40 UK based NSX.


At this stage, although I only covered 4k miles, my tyre choice next to the OEM ones is definitely the AD-08 for my OEM wheel and setup.


The side shoulder is really stiff, more stiff than the GSD3 or other BS aftermarket tyres that I drove in UK.



I don’t accelerate very hard but I do use hard breaking so breaking stability is important for me and the AD-08 is close enough to the OEM one.


Unlike GSD3 that took about 500 – 1,000 miles to run-in before I could get rid of the ‘wondering’ feeling, AD-08 started to work really quickly.


In the wet, going through the water paddle or even the ‘river like’ surface, AD-08 was very comfortable but this would be more to do with my alignment setup.


Over the last weekend, I had to drive through very wet condition without ABS so it was a good opportunity to feel for the brake and tyre.


As I felt in the past, I’m seriously considering locking out my compliance pivot all together.


Probably the corn shaped bush inside the pivot is already weakening that I just didn’t like the breaking stability especially when the ABS was not active.


In fact, I think even the old ABS was doing a good job of hiding this stability issue (for me) under breaking.


I know SoS has specific product and some of the Japanese NSX specialists are providing the similar ones so I’ll consider them when I have spare time (but when…)


I used to go through the rear tyres every 5k miles (max) with BS models but AD-08 looks fine even after 4k miles.


Having said this, I started to use it from late summer last year and if you could remember, we had mainly cool/wet/cold/snow conditions so not great to talk about the tyre wear.


So far, AD-08 seems to tick every box for me apart from the delivery lead time and the price although it came down a bit compared to the initial introduction period.


As advised from member NSX2000, it is best to contact Yokohama H.P.T. Ltd directly regarding the delivery schedule of the next batch and plan ahead if you are replacing your tyres with AD-08.


Regards,
Kaz