A slightly larger wheel and lower tire will help the car to "turn in" a little better and be more responsive but make the ride quality a little harsher. A much larger wheel with very low profile tires will completely ruin the way the car drives and feels on the road but may make the car more appealing to the younger crowd and also have the effect of making its owner think he is going to get laid more.
The 185/60/14 is the optimum tyre/wheel for the car. Mazda added a wider tyre with a lower profile because ignorant purchasers more concerned with looks than roadholding, ride quality or handling wanted the option. the damping and spring rates are set up for the 185/60 tyre
if you change the wheels you MUST have a four wheel alignment done as the car's roadholding and steering is only correct if the camber geometry is spot-on. Any change to the offset of the original set-up will dramatically worsen everything.
This car is a finely set up precision driving tool, not a truck with live axles.
An imaginary line drawn from the centre of each top wishbone through the centre of each lower wishbone MUST intersect with the road at exactly the centre of each tyre footprint and each corner is finely adjustable to make this happen.
Disadvantages are that your speedometer will be off a little, fuel ecomony will be affected
(which way depends on if your going smaller or bigger smaller better)
In an era when different models of car with different wheel sizes could be accommodated by simply changing the final drive ratio, it made sense for all transmissions to use direct drive as the highest gear. As noted earlier, however, this would cause the engine to operate at too high an RPM for efficient cruising. Although adding the cruising gear to the main gearbox was possible, it was generally simpler to add a separate two-gear overdrive system to the existing gearbox. This not only meant that it could be tuned for different vehicles, but had the additional advantage that it could be offered as an option, which was easy to add
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