Falken Azenis 615 discontinued!! (Page 1 of 2)

Yep, old news.  My guess is that the RT-615 began selling very well for some reason a few years ago and they decided to reformulate them to justify upping the price.

They reformulated the 615 to keep up with the competition.  The Azenis went from being "the tire to have" a few years ago to being "a good cheap tire, but there are better options for just a little more money".

So, now the Azenis should be on par with the competition in both grip and price.

I think the Dunlop Star Spec is the new "Azenis".  Seems to be cheaper than the other "maximum performance tires" currently available.

They do now.

^+1

yeah they offer one size, 195/55/15. yay......

Ooh. They have a 205. I have to agree with jw33. The stock tires on our car are 215/70R-15. The selection of tires in at least that width for 15" wheels sucks. We're considering 16" wheels just so we can get a decent tire, but we're so broke it looks like we might go with a 225/50R-15.

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp … =AVS+ES100

Plus our car is heavy, so a slightly harder tire should last longer.

On teh Dunlops, that was my analysis too. I got some for the Lexus, but only had 225's for it. Thats pretty narrow for that monster car. I did a track day, and they were very good for a street tire, but look like they will wear quickly on a heavy car - mostly the LF... I plan to have two spares at least to get through a real 24hr race.... (LF will probably use two tires, but on a two day type event, one set should be enough)

Hmm. That bodes well then for my application, but probably highly track/driver dependent

Okay after driving the 928 Estate on real R Comps (BFG R1) there is a HUGE (think grand canyon) difference in performance.....  but the R comps cost 55% more and will probably last 25% as long.....

I purchased two sets of the RT-615Ks in 195/60/14. Luckily I have a sponsor hookup so they ended up costing us about the same as the old RT-615s. Since they're so new, I haven't been able to find any reviews, but it seems that Falken is trying to move them upmarket to compete with the Dunlops, etc as stated above.

I'm hoping they live up to the hype. Treadwear on the old 615s was not an issue, but they heat cycled quickly and lost their stickiness with plenty of tread left. It was a problem we put up with before due to their low cost, but I'm hoping with the price premium comes more longevity. I'll post my opinions after Goin' For Broken.

I guess we shall see!

My opinion on the new RT-615K: It's hard to give a back to back comparison to the old 615s because we did a lot of work to the rear suspension of our car which really tightened up the handling, but my general impression of the Ks (195/60/14) is that the grip seems a bit better than the old 615s, but they were much more predictable and didn't fade away.

In fact, this is the first time that the team decided to just keep using the same set of tires rather than swapping after the first day, which we had previously done with the regular 615s. We just cross rotated the tires and I felt that they had just as much grip on day two. Other than some edge wear, they still look pretty damn good after 1100+ miles of track time and may use em for autocross later.

Having said this, I got the Ks for the same price as the old 615s. Would they be worth the normal retail price compared to other tires in the class (like the Direzza Star Specs)? Hard to say since I haven't driven on any of the other tires, but overall I was pleased with them.