Look at the sidewall and on the end of the size you will find a number and a letter. The number is the load index, the letter is the speed rating, and the letter is the one people get talked out of. A tyre rated V is built for speeds you will never see on the Uxbridge Road, so on the face of it there is no reason to pay for one.
That reasoning misses what the rating describes. A speed rating is a heat and construction specification, not a permission slip. To carry the higher letter a tyre needs a stiffer casing, a stronger belt package and rubber that keeps its shape once hot, and those are the same properties that give a car its steering response and its braking behaviour at everyday speeds. Drop a step and the car often feels slightly vaguer, particularly a heavy one. Drop below what the manufacturer put on the plate in the door shut and you are outside the specification the car was signed off with.
Just bought the car? The tyres are the first thing worth checking and the last thing anybody looks at. A cheap set fitted to get it sold, four different makes, or a pair with a date code from six years ago: all of it is common and none of it shows up on a test drive. We can come and look while it sits on the drive in Acton Town, tell you what you actually have, and fit what it needs at a time you pick. You are under no obligation once we have told you. Fitting includes the balance, the valve and the pressures.
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Driving here is mostly short, loaded and full of junctions, and that is precisely the use which exposes a casing running softer than the car was designed around. Nothing about the A40 Western Avenue or a stop-start crawl along the High Street asks for a high speed rating, and everything about them asks for the construction that comes with it.
A car built around a V rated tyre had been quoted a cheaper H elsewhere. The size matched and the saving was real. We fitted the correct rating and explained what the difference in the casing does, which is not something that shows up on a price list.
A heavier car near Park Royal had picked up one tyre somewhere with a load index below the plate figure. It looked identical from three feet away. The correct index went on, and the plate was photographed so the next set gets ordered from the car.
Four tyres for a car working off the A40, ordered against the figures in the door shut rather than whatever was fitted. Two of the old ones turned out to be a step down. Fitted at the workplace over a morning with the car never leaving its space.
It is the last letter of the size marking, sitting after the two or three digit load index. So on a tyre ending 91V, the 91 is the load and the V is the speed rating. The figure your car needs is on the plate in the driver's door shut.
Not automatically on an ordinary road car, which is where the confusion comes from. What matters is that the tyres suit how the car is used and pair sensibly on an axle. The plate figure is the manufacturer's specification, and going below it should be a knowing decision.
Rarely worth chasing. A step up usually brings a stiffer sidewall, which sharpens the steering slightly and can firm up the ride over the surfaces the Uxbridge Road serves up. If a tyre we recommend happens to carry a higher letter, no problem at all.
Day to day, yes. The load index is what the tyre can carry, and getting it wrong on a fully occupied car is a real problem rather than a theoretical one. Fit below the plate figure on a heavy vehicle and the casing runs hotter than it was designed to.
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