I need new tires and am considering a set of Bridgestone S03's based on the large number of great reviews by 996 owners on tirerack, this and other Pcar forums, and several other Internet sources.

However it seems that the S03's are not "Porsche Approved" whereas the S02A's are. What does "Porsche Approved" really mean and how important is it?

Based on the very large volume of 996 drivers who have the S03s and are having great success with them, is there any reason not to get S03s?

Thanks...

 

The SO-3 is a great tire and I highly recommended this tire...Some say the SO-3 isn't necessarily better than the SO-2A...I had the SO-2A tire on my Ferrari 360 Spyder and it's an excellent street tire, but they wear a lot quicker than other performance tires (ie. Pilot Sport, Pirelli P-Zero Rosso, etc).

Here's an article from the Tire Rack on Porsche Tire Testing:
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tirete...l/porsche.html

 

This paragraph is interesting:

"It is also important to know that while Porsche N-specification tires have been fine tuned to meet the specific performance needs of Porsche vehicles, the tire manufacturers may also build other tires featuring the same name, size and speed rating as the N-specification tires for non-Porsche applications. These tires may not be branded with the Porsche N-specification because they do not share the same internal construction and/or tread compound ingredients as the N-specification tires. Using tires that are not N-specific is not recommended and mixing them with other N-specification tires is not permissible."