Well if you've always wanted to re-shoe your concours baby, garage queen or really nice driver - or any 914 - in the OEM Dunlop SP57 Tires, here's a chance to weigh in on what they're worth to you, in order to try to interest Dunlop in doing a limited production run at their UK vintage tire plant.

Go here:
http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...=115150&st=

Plz vote for both price & how many tires you'd want (last option should read 5 or more).
http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...p;#entry1435730

We've got 63 votes, but not all are voting on number - so the 21 or so votes there roughly comes out to 80+ tires so far. If all 63 votes were avg. of 4 apiece, then that's about 250+ tires for an informal interest list so far. Not bad from just old 914 folks, plus more from the old 911s, 912s & other makes crowd using them.

CW weenies will like them for the vintage look, but they drove & cornered very nice too without the tougher steering & lower mpg & poor snow performance of the "fatties" of today. I like them for all of the above for my 73 2L!

Tom,
What do you think we need (quantity) to get a production run?

To those who didn't commit to a purchase quantity, do so please.
Pat

Pat, I don't think the system lets you re-vote in a poll if you didn't do both. In fact, I didn't realize that my looking at the results without voting constituted a null vote.

My plan was to let it run for a month or so, bump it weekly (which I've not done diligently), then get back to the distributor to give him the results. I don't have a feel for how many they'd need on initial interest, nor on price - so the true test will be when he checks with their UK plant, gets a number - we need to sell XXX for $x each, then you can get a real group buy interest poll going.

Some of those 63 noted above could've been just lookie-loos, but I think that those now 65 votes average about 4 per - plus 1 for my 5 or more - come up to around 250, which I'd think is decent for one segment of the market.

George at AA said over on the linking post to the poll here that he'd advertise them, and thought between the Teeners & 911/912 crowd, the entire run would go - if sold for the same price as the Vredesteins $105-110+/- (he also said Vreds have soft sidewalls).

Also, I'd think some 356ers would run SP57 165HR15s too - even if more than their OE 155SR15s.

I could put a linking post over on a 911, 912 & 356 website, but don't know where is best to go for that. ....any thoughts or suggestions?

I wonder if PCA has the ability to poll for interest on something like this?

Also, places like Lucas, Coker, Universal, etc. typically will buy up a "lot" of XXX tires for vintage & classic cars, just to have on hand for their customers - but I don't want to go around the supplier in case he wants the exclusive, but have suggested such a "team sales" approach across several suppliers, just like they do with the Michelins, Pirellis, Vredesteins, etc. at all of them.

This was a standard tire available new or as period replacements for any sports car, sports sedan/coupe, etc. using 165R15's & 155R15s during the 50's, 60's, 70's & 80's, that it should have very wide appeal.