Old Tires! Please read and comment!

Certainly, but you can what if yourself to death. What if you hit the brakes and a hose goes? What if a caliper locks up? What if because you have "good" tires you are driving 60 instead of 40? What if a wheel bearing seizes? Should we start a thread on old wheel bearing? How about driving at night with old headlights?

You are driving a 30+ year old car to begin with. No ABS, no air bags, certainly not the caliper of any modern car in any respect. Why are you driving it at all? These cars basically aren't safe by any of today standards. They belong in museums, not on the road.

I really don't disagree with this stuff, but regardless the best defense against having any type of problem is how you drive. Defensive driving.

Now, all that said let's start hearing from some guys who can document that they had an accident which could be directly and unequivocally linked to old tires.

FYI http://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Documents/2014_Tire_Safety_SYM_Panel_4a_Soodoo.pdf

Realize that I am always going to play devils advocate simply to provide a different point of view and keep the discussion going. Otherwise this thread would end with change tires every 5-7 years and no one would learn anything about the subject. Or at least that's the way I believe it would go.

 

Well, hopefully, people would learn to change modern compound tires after 5-7 years.

That's a "new trick" for some of us old dogs, as a set of 1960s Kelly-Springfields would last until they wore down to the cords.
Of course, they weren't exactly performance tires.
(And many young punks in '60s muscle cars would often convert rear tires into smoke in far less than 5 years. )


The easiest performance boost you can give to a 30+ year old car is a set of modern tires.
The new compounds are much more flexible and grip much better than the older tires produced decades ago.
But they don't stand up to oxygen like the rigid older tires of the past.

I've even heard tales of 308s, equipped with modern, upsized track tires, pulling the wheel hubs off the car, because the newer tires can exert more stress on the hubs than they were expected to get from stock tires back in the day.

 

Comment, as an opinion? Well, here's mine: As noted by others, drive the car enough to wear the tires out before they need replacement due to aging. Also, as noted previously, most tire manufacturers warranty their product against material defects, which includes aging, up to 5-7 years.
I've been a vintage car enthusiast and owner of variety of them in past 35+ years. Some I currently own I've had and enjoyed over 25 years. Most of my vintage cars are or were makes/models made in the 1930s, 1950s or 1960s and many I try/tried to drive enough to wear out tires before they get/got too old. I also try to replace all other critical rubber and alike components, like belts, brake-, coolant-, fuel- & oilhoses, etc along with servicing entire brake-, cooling- & fuel delivery systems, etc every 5 or so years regardless of their apparent condition.
(Full disclosure: As an owner/operator of a vintage car restoration & service business, I do all my own vehicle maintenance, repairs and/or services).
All this has allowed me to enjoy at least 200-300K miles of vintage driving with variety of machinery over the past 3+ decades and if I didn't have to work for living, I'd probably just drive my vintage cars even more ;-)

Bottom line: Keep the maintenance (& tires) up to date and drive 'em, whether it's a 308 or 335S, they're still just cars and built for that purpose.

 

I have a old 1994 Dodge Ram truck I use on occasional weekends for hauling. I went and looked at the tires a few months ago and even though they had lots of tread... I noticed that they were from 2004. Yikes.

So I replaced them and now it handles better, rides better and is most likely much much safer. I may put 1500 miles year on it so this will probably happen again.