^ I did. And in autocross, there is a trend of "the wider the tire, the better", however I have never liked the feel of tires overly wide for a wheel. My instincts were further confirmed when I read an article by Andy Hollis (very prominent Autocrosser, and former Mazda2 competitor).
Andy says: "
The tendency is to cram the widest legal tire on the widest legal rim that will fit and go for it. But that is not always the optimal solution, as street tires do not have the same super-stiff sidewalls as do the best R-comps. Sometimes it makes sense to run a narrower tire for a given rim fitment. From the testing we've done, we find that a good rule of thumb is that the optimal rim is the same size (rounded up to the nearest half-inch or so) as the tread width (not section width!). So a 205/50-15 tire with a typical tread width of 7.5" is best on 7.5" rim. An 8" rim will work, too, but it will be majorly stretched on a 9. Likewise, it will lose some performance on a 7, and will lose a LOT going down to a 6 or 6.5. Similarly, a 225/45-15 with an 8.2" tread width works best on at least an 8.5" rim and loses a fair bit on a 7.5". The rest of the article is
HERE
Since the iA comes with a 5.5" wide wheel, I wanted to get the narrowest semi-performance tire I could on the stock rims (without drastically changing the diameter). Had they made a 185, I would have probably went that route...
But even taking Autocross out of the equation, it's not like these iA's have lots of tire shredding power, so I am pretty sure a 195 is plenty wide for now!..
Oh, and if you are thinking about the same Bridgestone Potenza RE 760s, they are on sale through February 29th for 20% off most places. I went to a local Firestone (not sure if they are nationwide) and got these for $447 installed. Cant beat them for the price!
