I have Nitto T555's I love them, they were cheap, grip hard, they kinda suck in the rain but other than that they're great.

There is already a lot of excellent info in the thread, so I will just provide a bit of summary info for the OP. In terms of tire grade / groupings, I will use TireRack's classification:

- Extreme Performance Summer (highest performance street tires)
- Max Performance Summer
- Ultra High Performance Summer
- High Performance Summer
- Grand Touring Summer (lowest performance street tires)

The best modern all season tires are also quite good, but I wouldn't bother with them for this car. Especially when you have another more appropriate vehicle for the poor weather, it makes no sense for you to drive the Stang when it is cold and wet.

Don't get Extreme Performance Tires
Given that you do not actively race / autox / track your car, there is no reason for you to consider the Extreme Performance category. For the most part, these are basically street legal competition tires that are intended for autox-ers and track day participants. When you run them on the street, they are fairly noisy, and they tend to wear out / heat cycle out a lot faster than the other grades.

As a side note to this, just because you don't autox / track the car doesn't mean you shouldn't. As a matter of fact, with the Stang being your first sporty car, you should totally come to some autox / track day events and find out how the car can be / should be driven at its limits. Not only is it a shxtload of fun, there is also a safety aspect to this -- the Stang GT is a lot of car. You want to know how to control and keep this beast reined in. The best environment to learn this is NOT on the street -- a safe and controlled environment with qualified instructors is where it should be done. Locally, VCMC and UBCSCC both organize performance driving school, autox, and track days (with instructors) for people such as yourself to enjoy your car in a safe environment. I know VCMC typically offer their Velocity driving school in late April to May, and registration fills up very quickly. I would highly recommend you to consider doing that.

Tires to Consider
In the Max Performance and Ultra High Performance grades, the following are all great tires:

- Michelin Pilot Super Sport
- Continental ExtremeContact DW
- BFGoodrich g-Force Sport COMP-2
- Bridgestone Potenza S-04

I have a lot of personal experience with the Michelin PSS and Conti DW, and I would say that in terms of overall max grip, the PSS has a slight edge over the DW. Neither the GF Sport Comp2 and the S-04 provide as much grip as these two, but they come close, and have other benefits of their own.

If money is no issue, PSS is currently the best option for your purposes. It is grippy; it provides great steering feedback and turn in; it is comfortable on the street and can still be taken to the autox / track. As a matter of fact, locally, it (along with the DW) are the preferred wet performance street tires since they consistently out-perform the Extreme Performance Tires in the wet. The only down side to the PSS is price.

The DW is another favourite because a lot of its performance characteristics are similar to the PSS. The only major differences are its soft sidewalls and a much lower price tag. The soft sidewalls makes for a very comfortable ride on the street (I'd argue that it is more comfy than the PSS), but the tradeoff is a noticeably worse steering feel and a less direct and delayed turn in response. At the autox and the track, the sidewalls on the DW are soft enough that I can readily feel the delay in steering / turn-in as the sidewall flexes before the tires will actually bite. During performance driving, this is something you will have to account for. At the end of the day, the DW will turn in a slightly slower time than the PSS at a timed event.

On your Stang, I suspect the weight of the car will make the issues of the DW soft sidewalls more noticeable. It doesn't mean the DW is a poor choice for your car. It's just something you want to take into consideration during your decision process.

I don't have any personal experience with the g-Force Sport COMP-2 or the S-04, but have read a lot of reviews about them. Compared to the PSS, they offer slightly less performance, but are still excellent choices to consider.

Last but not least, at this point, unless you have some free money burning a hole in your wallet, I would not bother purchasing new wheels and/or tires just yet. Have some fun with your stock wheels and Eagle F1 first, and learn how to get the most out of them before you upgrade. I am not familiar enough with Mustangs, but I am reasonably certain that they can swallow a lot more wheel and tire than the current OE setup. In the name of function over form, I would not go any bigger than 18" wheels, but you can definitely go wider with both the wheels and the tires. And that will allow you to get a lot more performance from the car. Upsizing your wheels to 19" or 20" won't -- as a matter of fact, they will hurt both performance and ride quality.

Have fun, enjoy your Stang, and I hope to see you at one of the local autox / track day events some time in the future!

Perfect. Thanks everyone, exact information I was looking for.

So concensus is keep the tires for now, someone like me won't notice big performance increases with those crazy expensive tires. And just don't depend on it in any snow or near freezing temperatures.

Yeah 19s and 20s are heavier so that can only hurt the performance. 19s will be as large as I'll go if I do decide to upgrade.

Last thing..what width would you guys recommend when I get new tires? 10 inches all around?

@dave and anyone regarding WHEN to switch out tires for winters or use a different car, you guys say october - april for winter? Is that a bit overkill? We only get near freezing temperatures during december-feb. Shouldn't summers generally be ok in march-nov?

I base it on when I'm driving to the mountains. So December to early April.

I run pilot super sports in the summer. Great grip, still good when it rains, and they also look good too. Stocks for our mild winters. Plus because they are a cheaper tire I don't feel as bad when they accidentally get loose in the rain

not according to michelin ;) Pilot Sport A/S 3 | Michelin Tires

^^ fantastic tires btw. but not to be confused with a dedicated summer only performance tire

My personal experience with tires is that Michelin is the best. I'd rather have a set of 3 year old michelins vs some new cheapo brand.
My favourite are Michelin Pilot Super Sports, its like glue. Or Pilot Cup sports even 10 years old and half worn are still great.

If they aren't available in your size, I run Michelin Pilot A/S 3 on the Saab, They have so much grip in the summer, excellent in the rain, and not bad in the snow, but they are not winter tires by any means.

On the Volvo I run Yokohama S.Drive, have amazing grip in the sun and rain, and ok in the snow, but they do wear rather fast, and are a bit noisy, not excessive, but definitely faster than Michelin, I do autocross on them and I drive like a hoon though. That said, I'd buy another set.

I friend has an RSX with DWS on it, good grip on autocross for all seasons.

Wheel size is personal preference, you can have 22s to 30s on your stang, and weight is about how much you are willing to pay.

I picked wheel size (that looks the best on my car) then tires (fits under the wheel archs and have good reviews), go on stang forums to ask around, 10in all around is a bit extreme.

If you don't plan on taking your car to a track, Michelin PSS would be a good choice. You have more grip than what's necessary for street driving, they're quiet and comfy, and they're long lasting. My complaints with the PSS is that they do become very greasy on track after a couple hard laps, and the sidewalls are incredibly soft in comparison to my previous Star Specs which you can feel definitely on track.

That's why I said a 'rough guide' :) When you switch is totally based on where you live and where you're driving. I'm up in Squamish, where the law says winter tires from October 1st to April 30th. In real practice, though, I usually mount them near the end of October and I pretty much always have summer's on near the beginning of April. I could probably extend that if I lived in Vancouver, but I'd be making that decision based on the forecast...keeping in mind it's better to burn the winter's an extra week or two vs. missing work on a rainy morning.

-Dave

I have S.Drives on my MR2 and for their price, I can't complain. They grip very well in dry and rain even for spirited drives.

They don't grip that well during auto x though so something to consider if you plan on taking your car racing. If I were to do it again, I'd probably get Direzza ZII or something similar but I'm gonna run a dedicated set for auto x/track instead.

PSS on the Lexus (currently on Fuzions for winter)
RE-11A on the MR2 (garaged)

currently using proxes r1r for my mr2 and quite pleased with it