Project E39 M5: Yokohama Advan GT Wheels & Nitto Invo Tires

By Martin Gonzales

After installing the StopTech Trophy Brake System on our Project BMW E39 M5 we unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, had to say goodbye to our stock wheel package. The OE mesh wheels were not designed to clear huge multi piston calipers and neither the front or rear wheels would clear our new brake kit. So we had no other choice but to do a long-needed upgrade to our project’s wheels and tire package.

If you’ve been following our M5 project, you’ll recall that when we installed the front and rear Trophy kit on our M5 we weighed all the components and found our new brake system came with a 6 pound weight penalty per rear corner. This meant our new wheel and tire combo would have to meet a few requirements. Not only did we need a wheel that could clear the large StopTech calipers and help us improve on our unsprung weight gain, we also needed the wheel to be wider than stock as we were looking to increase the M5’s contact patch in preparation for future horsepower mods.

Our requirements for tires would be no less demanding. Though our E39 M5 is a high performance vehicle, it is not a race car. So we wanted a tire with enough grip that it could be pushed through the canyons with confidence, but that was still civil enough to drive on a Sunday cruise comfortably.

Enter Yokohama Wheels and Nitto Tire!

Read the rest of our Project BMW E39 M5 series!

Our old wheel and tire package which consisted of OE M5 wheels wrapped with Nitto NT555 G2s will definitely be missed. We loved the NT555 G2s! They had good overall grip and were one of the quietest tires on the highway that we have ever tested. Hopefully our new wheel/tire package will help us move-on quickly.

To help us meet our goal of having a tire with confidence inspiring grip and daily driving comfort, we selected Nitto’s Invo. The Invo is Nitto’s Luxury Sport Ultra High Performance tire. It was specifically designed for plus-size staggered fitments on high-performance luxury sedans with owners who demand low road noise and comfort. Because of this, ultimate dry performance is pulled back a little in order to increase wet performance, ride comfort and overall tire life.

The Invo has a much more aggressive tread pattern than Nitto’s NT05 max performance summer tire, which helps it evacuate water from the zone between the tread and road for better wet grip. The Invo is engineered to have a decent ride and has by nature a softer sidewall than the reinforced sidewall and bead filled ultra high-performance Nitto NT05. The ride is designed to be noticeably better than the NT05, but by no means is the Invo a sloppy or sluggishly responding tire. The Invo is also available in larger diameter and lower profile plus fitments than the NT555 G2s we were already running on our stock E39 M5 wheels.

We went to a plus size for our M5, going up to an 19 inch wheel. For tire sizes we chose a 265/30-19 for the front and a 285/30-19 for the rear. This is wider than the 245/45-18 and 275/40-18 NT555 G2 tires we were running on our M5 wheels, which were already a little wider than stock since we ran slightly taller tires when we upgraded to the G2s. Though we did not increase width by a large amount, this is probably the widest you can go on an E39 M5 without having to alter the body panels. Keep in mind that the E39 M5’s rear rear fender lips come flat from the factory, so there’s nothing to be gained from rolling them.