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Can anyone recommend the best tyres for prolonged motorway driving? (up to 2 hours).

Tyre is 195/55/R15 85V.

Are budget ones recommended? Or shall I be looking at mid-range ones? I don't do over 5000 miles a year, its a mix of short trips but weekly motorway drives.

Perhaps a silly question, but why are you running a 195/55/15 on a 6N2? On a 15 inch wheel, you should be running a 195/45/15 or youll send the speedo out off the scale

Cos that was what was on it when I bought it, a 50 actually, but cos I had the back 2 tyres changed 3 months I wanted all 4 to be consistent. For some reason the rear 2 tyres were larger and I only realised a month after they were changed!

I see

I would change the lot to 195/45/15 and sell what's on there (they fit golfs). It'll affect your economy, acceleration and throw your speedo by about 10Mph

Tyre wise Dunlop,bf Goodrich, Yokohama, continental, toyo, Goodyear would be my choices

My turn for the stupid question now, how does a 45 differ from a 55 for the speed? I put new tyres on today so now all 4 are identical. MOT isn't til next April so no doubt I'll need to change tyres before that due to them wearing.

55 is a higher profile which means the tyre has a larger diameter, therefore less revolutions are needed for the wheel to cover the same distance.

The car is calibrated against a set amount of revolutions from the sensors on the wheels for a specific tyre size in this case for a 15 it's a 45 profile

At 60MPH indicated you will actually be travelling 66MPH to give you an idea unlike a 45 profile which would be 60MPH or just under due to speedo accuracy.

I wonder why the previous owner put 55's on them then?! I normally do 70mph on the motorway so in fact I'm doing a higher speed?

It's a very strange thing to do

What wheels are on the car? Are they original VW?

Yup you'll actually be doing closer to 80

The wheels are alloys which may be something to do with the modification.

Hmm its pretty beast on the motorway but didn't realise I'm doing near enough 80! I get about 450 miles out of a full tank before I re-fuel. Previous owner said 600 but I don't let it run to the fuel warning line.

That's quite possible then. The wheels probably came with bigger tyres and the previous owner didn't know better

He said something about them being easier for steering or something. Probably trying every line he could to sell me the car!

Lol that's a new one haha

Yeah, he's a mate though so I kinda believed him!

Motorway driving wears down tyres quicker though right? I mean, I wasn't sure about budget tyres cos I might need to replace them frequently but at the moment I can only afford what I can get, and the tread depth was close to 2mm on the front tyres. I don't fancy points on my licence and a fine!

Mileage in general wears them down. Motorways won't make that much difference - of course the faster the wheels are turning the quicker they will wear but it's down to the miles. Likely at least 10k from a new set

I see, well I don't envisage doing more than 6000 miles annually. Should be fine to last til the next MOT? (Its next April).

I think the two rear tyres are mid-range ones as they were fitted by the garage that did my service as they were below the legal limit and I didn't want to drive it around in case I got stopped. I read its advisable to have your better tyres at the rear.