Lower profile tires

I have 295/35/18's on the back of my car. The side profile is the same but I like the way the car looks from the back a lot better. The second picture is a Michelin Pilot Sport 265 vs the Bridgestone 295. Not a huge difference but just enough. Hope this helps. Overall diameter of a 295/35/18 is 26.1" vs 265/40/18 26.3". You will not notice the difference(.2").
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No matter what tire size you use you want to stick pretty close to the stock tire diameter. It's not like the speedometers on these cars are very accurate anyway but a different tire diameter will through off the speedo and too large of a variation front to rear will cause ABS malfunctions and other problems. That said in keeping the same overall diameter the only way to lessen the actual height of your side wall is to move to a larger diameter rim. 19s would shorten your side wall by 1/2".

Yes the wider tires will have a smaller side wall # but that is because it is a percentage of width not an actual measurement. So a 55 and a 35 can actually be the exact same side wall height depending on the with of the tire.

 

my next set of tires.. I will probably go 235/40/18 and 295/35/18 on my stock rims..

Ive seen this on several 355's on stock rims.. and beleive its an acceptable alternative to stock size..

 

Thanks Paul. I hope it helped.

 

Note: stock wheels are 18*8.5 and 18*10

Point 1: 295s really want 10.75 wheels, but some are able to get them mounted on 10"ers.

The way you can tell is to take the 295 (from the 295/35ZR18) and divide by 25.4 and subtract 1.0 = 10.61 which I would round up, but anything within 0.4 inches should work {which is 10.21 through 11.01}.

Point 2: 225/35ZR18s at the front will drop the car 0.22 inches,
265/35ZR18 at the rear will drop the car 0.26 inches,
this will add a bit of oversteer at the back by changing the roll axis inclination.

Also note: These cars are already absurdly low to the road surface at stock heights.

The real question is why did you take 1/2 inch out of width of the tires? when you should have added 1/2 inch?

 

Stock are 10" wide on the rear.
I was wondering why you downsized the rear rims to 9.5" from 10"?
You shouldn't put 295's on a narrower rear rim.
If I was going aftermarket.....I would have gone a little wider on the rear.

 

just read this again.....missed the point that you bought the car with the narrower rear rim.