In an earlier discussion it was requested that I post pictures of the new rims and tires I put on my 13-month-old 2005 HCH, so I posted five pictures here:

http://www.greenhybrid.com/share/bro...&imageuser=832

(ignore the older pictures, only the first five are new)

My rims are 17" Enkei, relatively lightweight (18 lbs.), which at the time of my purchase were only $69 each. For the tires, I decided to experiment and go with a non-LRR-rated (i.e. unknown) South Korean brand, which are allegedly high quality, and which were exceptionally affordable ($55 each). Can you tell I'm married to an accountant?

I decided to forego the LRR tires of the same size, primarly for price, secondarily as an experiment. Consider me your own personal guinea pig.

Here are my MPG observations.

In city driving, I'm not sure I am noticing much difference at all. Last winter I was getting roughly 42-44, and this winter I'm getting 40-44, closer to 44 now that the tires are over 1k miles old.

In highway driving, at 55-65 MPH, I seem to be getting the same mileage also, perhaps a bit less, but I'm just being cautious when I say that. In my few trips, at around 60-65 MPH, I seem to average 48-50 MPG, which is about what I was getting before. I don't want to state this definitively until I have made some more trips.

In highway driving, at 70+ MPH, I seem to be getting worse mileage than before. Closer to 40 MPG, sometimes even below. Before, I recall getting 40-42 MPG at that speed.

From this small amount of empirical data, I conclude that so far, my city driving has not suffered much (maybe 1-2 MPG), and my slowish-speed highway MPG has not suffered much either. However, at higher highway speeds, I seem to be loosing up to 3-4 MPG.

As I say, take this all with a helping of salt, because I have only had the tires for a short time. But in case it's of interest to anybody, I post it here.