Nitto Invo 245/40/19 – 20mm more contact patch on each side along with pushing the wheel out towards the fender another 10mm with the new offsets for even more front grip.
Besides the aesthetic improvements the wheels have made, we don’t think it’s our imagination that our project car is grabbing the next highest gear a couple hundred rpm sooner and holding gears longer without downshifting. It’s no secret that reducing unsprung weight offers tenfold improvements for reducing weight. Gas mileage has picked up a couple ticks as well, as our last couple tanks have been 20-30 miles further than normal.
Rather than weigh the wheels and tires separately we weighed the setup together old vs. new.
The old fronts weighed in at 49.8 lbs. The new fronts are 48.4 lbs for a savings of 1.4 lbs, which is pretty remarkable considering our new wheel is 1.5” wider than stock and we’ve got 20mm more tire up there. The old rear setup was 52.2 lbs versus the new rear setup of 47.8 lbs for a savings of 4.4 lbs.
You may be asking how the new rears can be lighter than the new fronts by almost half a pound, considering both the wheels and the tires are wider. Since we have the misfortune benefit of mounting our rear tires on the 19 x 10 inch 35 wheels (also that rear combined setup was 50.8 lbs meaning that the extra half inch of width certainly adds more material to the wheel), but there must also be additional aluminum with the more aggressive 35 offset vs. the 50 offset we ended up with. The more aggressive the offset (lower the number) the more the wheel has to curve in towards the hub pushing the wheel outward.
No tire that grips this well has any business being this quiet going down the road was my first thought when driving on the Nitto Invo. Only when the road surface is at its worst does the Invo get loud. With the former craptastic all-season, cheapest tire available that the dealer put on our car, we would often bounce off the traction control multiple times from a stop. The scenario was pretty dangerous because it typically happened when making a right turn pulling out into traffic. Slightly more accelerator was applied to pull out into traffic, traction control would kick in and pull all power. The accelerator was released and reapplied and the process would repeat while traffic was closing in. With new wider wheels and tires combined with better grip, that real world situation has been resolved.
By no means was this an easy upgrade with all the research, waiting for the wheels to ship from Japan and then mounting them up with tires, only to discover they were too aggressive. The end result was worth the effort though, as we work towards that focused tuner car look compared the sea of stock G37 sedans on the road. The second set of rears wheels were definitely worth doing for the right fit, so now we need to find for a interested party with a g35/g37 coupe that can swallow up those more aggressive rear wheels. Until next time, happy motoring!
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