Few components alter the character of an old car quite as much as its tyres. They affect grip, steering, ride, braking and gearing, but on an Allard there is another consideration that is harder to measure: they affect how the car looks and feels as a period machine.
That makes choosing tyres rather more complicated than simply asking which one offers the most grip.
For an Allard owner there are several competing questions. Should we retain the tall, relatively narrow crossply appearance the car would originally have had? Is a radial a sensible improvement for modern road use? If we compete in hill climbs and sprints, should we fit the grippiest tyre available? And, increasingly importantly, how much are we prepared to spend finding out?
There isn’t a single correct answer so let’s look at each point in turn.
Crossply or radial?
Most of our post-war Allards were designed around crossply tyres. The J2 and J2X, for example, were originally fitted with 6.00-16 crossplies, while models including the K1, K2, K3, L, M and P1 commonly used the now rather awkward 6.25-16 size. Modern suppliers therefore tend to offer 6.00-16 as a crossply alternative, or approximately 185R16 where a radial is desired. The Palm Beach is one of the exceptions, having originally used a smaller 15-inch fitment.
The distinction is much more than the shape of the tread.
In a crossply tyre the carcass plies run diagonally across one another, so the sidewall and tread form, mechanically speaking, a more unified structure. A radial separates the functions rather more: the carcass runs radially from bead to bead while belts beneath the tread help stabilise the crown. This means the tread can remain flatter against the road while the sidewall flexes.
In broad terms, that helps explain why radials became dominant. They tend to offer better directional stability, tread life and cornering performance.
But “better” requires some qualification when the car in question was designed in the 1940s or 1950s.
A good crossply allows an Allard to move around in the manner its designers expected. There is more tyre movement and generally a greater sense that the tyre, suspension and chassis are all contributing to the cornering process. There can be more slip angle before the car changes direction, and the transition towards loss of grip can feel very different from that of a modern tyre.
For somebody wanting the authentic experience, that isn’t necessarily a defect. It is part of the car.
And then there is appearance
This deserves much more consideration than it sometimes receives.
Fit a very modern-looking, wide, low-profile tyre to an otherwise beautifully presented 1950s car and the whole stance can change. It can look as though the wheels belong to another era.
The tall sidewalls, relatively narrow tread and period tread patterns of traditional tyres are an important part of an Allard’s appearance. This is particularly noticeable on the exposed wheels of cars such as the J2 and J2X, but it matters on the saloons and tourers too.
Modern classic tyres complicate the argument in an interesting way. A radial no longer necessarily means fitting something which looks as though it came from a modern family hatchback. Several manufacturers now produce radials specifically for historic cars, with tall profiles and period-style tread patterns. Classic-car tyre specialists make the same point: modern construction and period appearance are no longer mutually exclusive.
That gives us three broad possibilities rather than two:
| Choice | Character |
|---|---|
| Traditional crossply | Closest to original appearance and driving behaviour |
| Period-style radial | A compromise between traditional appearance and radial behaviour |
| Modern/performance-oriented tyre | Greater emphasis on outright performance, potentially at the expense of period appearance and feel |
None is automatically right or wrong.
Is more grip necessarily better?
This is where things become particularly interesting.
It is easy to assume that if tyre A generates more cornering grip than tyre B, tyre A must be the better tyre.
For a modern competition car that may be a perfectly reasonable starting point. For an Allard, I am not convinced it always is.
Much of the pleasure of driving these cars comes from the communication between tyre, steering, suspension and chassis. An Allard which moves around progressively at relatively modest speeds can arguably be more enjoyable than one which grips tenaciously until everything happens much faster.
There is also a mechanical consideration. More grip means that greater lateral force can be generated before the tyre slides. Those forces ultimately travel through wheels, hubs, bearings, suspension and chassis components that may have been designed more than seventy years ago.
That doesn’t mean fitting a sticky tyre is intrinsically harmful. It does mean that maximum grip shouldn’t automatically be our only measure of tyre quality.
The question might instead be:
Which tyre makes this particular Allard behave best for the way I use it?
That is rather harder to answer.
Road use
For an Allard primarily driven on the road, a radial has some obvious attractions.
Directional stability, wet-weather behaviour, wear and predictable motorway or dual-carriageway cruising can all matter more than another few tenths around a corner. A radial may also give a more familiar feel to someone accustomed to modern cars.
Period-style radials are particularly attractive here because they can preserve much of the car’s appearance without requiring the owner to accept every characteristic of a crossply.
My own experience is with a P1 Special running Blockley radials. They have been used both on the road and in hill climbs and, overall, I have found them very good. There is nothing about them that makes me feel I need to change.
The problem is that this tells me very little about whether I might prefer something else.
And that leads to one of the biggest problems with classic-car tyres.
The cost of experimenting
Tyres have become expensive.
At the time of writing, current UK listings for suitable 16-inch classic Allard fitments range from around £140 at the lower end to £400 or more per tyre, with some specialist road and competition tyres approaching £480 each. Four tyres can therefore mean anything from roughly £600 to comfortably beyond £1,500 before fitting, tubes or other costs are considered.
That makes tyre experimentation very difficult.
If I could spend an afternoon trying my P1 Special on three or four different sets of tyres, I would be fascinated to do so. What I am considerably less enthusiastic about doing is spending £1,000 or more every time I want to conduct the experiment.
This also makes recommendations surprisingly unreliable.
One owner may passionately advocate a particular tyre. But how many alternatives has that owner actually driven on the same car, under the same conditions?
Often we buy an expensive set, fit them, discover that they work perfectly well and then use them for the next several years.
Perfectly understandable — but not exactly controlled testing.
What about competition?
Hill climbs and sprints introduce another set of priorities.
Here there is an obvious attraction in fitting a tyre which produces more grip. At somewhere such as Prescott or Shelsley Walsh, tenths of a second matter, and tyres are one of the few changes capable of influencing almost every braking and cornering zone.
But even here, outright grip isn’t the entire story.
Hill climbs present tyres with an unusual challenge. Runs are very short, so a tyre which takes several laps of a racing circuit to reach its ideal operating temperature may never get there. Motorsport UK regulations also restrict artificial tyre warming in sprints and hill climbs, making cold or near-cold behaviour particularly relevant.
Predictability matters too. A tyre which communicates clearly as it approaches its limit may give the driver more confidence than one with greater ultimate grip but a sharper breakaway.
And there is another complication for those of us who drive our competition cars to events: the tyre has to do two jobs.
It may need to cope with rain, standing water, motorway driving and several hundred road miles — and then be expected to produce a competitive time when we arrive.
That is a rather different requirement from a car arriving on a trailer with a set of tyres chosen solely for competition.
Current Motorsport UK regulations classify various permitted road and competition tyres into different lists, so anyone competing should of course check the rules applying to their own class and event before buying.
Road tyre versus competition tyre
It is therefore worth separating two questions which are easily confused.
What makes the fastest Allard?
and
What makes the nicest Allard to drive?
They may produce different answers.
A dedicated competition tyre can make sense for a car used seriously in speed events. But an owner who enjoys touring, club runs and the occasional hill climb might quite reasonably accept a little less ultimate grip in return for longer life, better road behaviour and lower cost.
Likewise, somebody who values originality highly might knowingly sacrifice some grip because a tall crossply simply looks and feels right.
None of these owners is necessarily making the wrong decision.
They are optimising for different things.
Brand loyalty — or simply experience?
There are now tyres suitable for our cars from a number of manufacturers, including traditional names and smaller specialist classic-tyre producers.
This article deliberately doesn’t attempt to rank them.
Tyres are too dependent on car, pressure, wheel width, suspension setup, driving style and intended use for the club to declare one manufacturer “best”. Some suppliers themselves recommend different constructions depending upon whether originality or road performance is the priority, while today’s market contains traditional crossplies, historic-pattern radials and specialist competition products across a surprisingly wide price range.
Owner experience is therefore far more interesting than a league table.
Someone who has driven the same J2 on two genuinely different tyre types can tell us something particularly useful. Someone who has competed on crossplies and radials can tell us even more.
And owners who have gone back from radials to crossplies may perhaps have the most interesting story of all.
Perhaps we should actually test them
Which brings me to an idea.
Instead of debating tyres indefinitely, perhaps the club should conduct its own experiment.
Imagine a club track or test day involving several cars with compatible wheel sizes. Rather than chasing lap records, owners could swap complete wheel-and-tyre sets and undertake a few controlled laps or runs.
A car could therefore be driven on a traditional crossply, a period-style radial and perhaps a more competition-orientated tyre on the same day.
We could record impressions of:
- steering weight and response;
- ride quality;
- straight-line stability;
- turn-in;
- grip;
- breakaway characteristics;
- confidence in the wet;
- appearance;
- and, where appropriate, actual times.
It would hardly constitute laboratory tyre testing, and there would be plenty of variables to contend with. But it would give club members something currently rather difficult to obtain: the opportunity to experience another tyre without first having to buy four of them.
It might also produce some surprising results.
Perhaps the fastest tyre wouldn’t be the favourite.
Perhaps some of us currently running radials would rediscover the appeal of a good crossply.
Perhaps committed crossply users would discover that a period-style radial doesn’t ruin an Allard at all.
And perhaps we would simply confirm that the tyres already fitted to our cars suit us perfectly.
That, in itself, would be useful information.
So, what should you fit?
The unsatisfactory answer is also probably the correct one:
It depends.
If maintaining the appearance and character of the car is paramount, a good traditional crossply has a very strong argument in its favour.
If the car regularly covers long road distances, particularly in varied conditions, a period-style radial may offer an extremely attractive compromise.
If competition times matter above everything else, tyre performance and suitability for short, cold hill-climb or sprint runs become much more significant.
And if, like many of us, the car does a little of everything, the answer will inevitably involve compromise.
The important thing may be not to assume that newer is automatically better, that more grip is automatically better, or indeed that original specification is automatically better.
Tyres are part of the way an Allard communicates with its driver.
Changing them can alter not only how quickly the car goes around a corner, but the entire personality of the car while doing it.
And that makes them worthy of rather more thought than four black circles at the bottom of the wheels.