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Fairly interesting if nothing else.

Interesting as you say - surprised no one had already patented this.

If you put them on the wrong way, the handling could be diabolical!

I've been reading up some more on this and I still don't quite get it. I just keep coming back to the fact that a cylinder will roll straight, while a cone (essentially what these tyres are) won't. Someone on here smarter than me able to explain it?

yep, that would be true if you rolled the tyre without it fitted to a car.

yeah as long as the axis (or axle in this case) remains horizontal / parallel to the ground, it should roll straight no matter what the shape (within reason)

The cone analogy is correct but you talking a cone tapered so little you'd struggle to see the difference to a cylinder.

Remember that a car which has a lot of camber wears the inside edge. The cambered tyre stops that. However the tyre is already using that *camber* of the tyre to offset the wheel angle due to the suspension. It's a performance improvement in the sense of outside of cornering you have a full contact patch. However it should be worse in corners after. As the car leans on the outside shoulder.

Atleast that's how I read it.

Yes the larger diameter side of the tyre will be covering more distance then the smaller side. This means the tyre would squeal when driving in a straight line

Jeo wrote:I've been reading up some more on this and I still don't quite get it. I just keep coming back to the fact that a cylinder will roll straight, while a cone (essentially what these tyres are) won't. Someone on here smarter than me able to explain it?

Correct and therefore the reason they work "Introducing camber into a tire, and eliminating the need to have toe-in alignment settings"

Left Cone >

Right Cone <

Front wheels viewed from in front or behind > <

The left wheel will naturally want to roll to the right, and vice versa on the opposite side, canceling each other out, this is the same effect as toe in on regular tyres.

I assume if you do it the other way you can get toe out for all the racer boys.

I would also assume the difference in rolling diameter wouldn't be very large. However one expects that natural wear would even them out, the same way a nafed up alignment chews out tyres on the inside or outside.

Used one these little beauties in model car racing for about 10 years
Ideal for foam tyres and chamfering rubber tyres...