A Very Merry Christmas from Mr. Goma Tires to All Our Dear Customers and Friends!

25 Cars Worth Waiting For: 2016–2019

Each forthcoming car, truck, and SUV is an as-yet-unrealized promise, but none emerges wholly from the ether. Clean sheets of paper are found at Staples not car companies, whose planners juggle plants, partnerships, powertrains, and platforms to feed global sales channels. This guarantees a high likelihood of product success, but often also a bland if competent uniformity. So, when something reaches off the page and slaps you in the face, when a just-launched online configurator has you rushing to check your bank balance—that’s amazing. We are celebrating that here.

Curating this stream of information is nearly as fraught as managing the billions it takes to develop a new model. We beg and borrow insights from around the business, tap sources, and hold our bladders until after the wine glasses have been cleared from the dinner table before asking questions. This year we are even ranking them, counting down to the one that’s most worth waiting for.

Let's do this!

2017 Ford GT

2018 Land River Defender

2016 Porsche Cayman GT4

2016 McLaren P14

2017 BMW 5 Series-M5

2018 Honda CivicType R

2017 Alfa Romeo Giorgio Sedan

2017 Lamborghini Asterion

2016 Cadillac GT6

2017 Lexus SC

Ford Focus RS

2017 Volkswagen Beetle Dune

2017 Maserati Alfieri

2016 Infinity Q30

2017 Jaguar F-Pace

2017 Chevrolet Corvette Zora ZR1

2017 Bugatti Chiron

2017 Honda Ridge Line

2018 Mercedes-Maybach Pullman

2017 Mercedes-Benz C-class Coupe

2017 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk

2016 Ferrari 488GTB

2017 RAM Rampage

2016 Bentley Bentagya

2018 Chevrolet Bolt

Flower Wheels for Your Volkswagen Beetle

By a show of hands, okay, maybe comments, who hasn't seen the Daisy wheel? It's a pretty good bet that most of us have seen this particular aftermarket wheel at one time or another, and with very good reason.

Designed to fit the 1998-2010 "new" Volkswagen Beetle (among some other VW models), the Sport Edition Daisy has easily become one of our most popular wheel offerings to date.

The appeal of the Daisy wheel is simply undeniable. Some things in life just seem to go with one another. Exactly like peanut butter and jelly, hot wings and football, summer days and convertibles, the Daisy wheel and the Beetle were made for each other.  

Available only in 16" diameter, the Daisy has a center cap that can be colored to match your vehicle and give it its own unique personality. More than just about any other wheel, we have found that the Daisy makes an extremely memorable holiday or birthday gift. Shop by vehicle and to purchase the Daisy wheel for your Beetle, or add a set of tires to freshen the look and ride of your Bug! - 

Custom Colors Are Now Available For Your Sportscar's...Tires

Clients of Lapo Elkan’s uber-hip yacht and auto custom shop, Garage Italia Customs, will soon be some of the first drivers in the world to have tailor-made tires that are being created exclusively by Pirelli in a variety of colors.

Green is mean! Credit Garage Italia Customs

It makes perfect sense as these two hyper-Italian companies collaborate to take customization to the extreme. Pirelli as the only supplier for Formula 1 has always been at the forefront of tire technology. And their design engineers are running with Garage Italia Customs’ idea to develop an exclusive new range of tires that would make the italian custom shop’s creations even more unique.

Credit Garage Italia Customs

Meanwhile, green and light blue tire sets have been installed on Lapo Elkan’s Ferrari 458 Italia and Ferrari California. And Elkan will always admit that part of the fun of being an entrepreneur is testing results of the research carried out by the Garage Italia Customs designers on his own vehicles.

“I’m immensely proud to collaborate with such an excellence in this field,” says Elkan. “Pirelli is an Italian symbol worldwide when it comes to performance. Together we are bringing color in what was an exquisitely technologic sector.”

The force is with white wheels. Credit Grarage Italia Customs

‘I’m driving here!’ Here’s how Google’s self-driving car could talk to pedestrians

Humans are exceptionally clever at communicating from the driver’s seat. We wave our hands, we use our horns and lights, and in some cases, we roll down our windows and speak our minds. Autonomous cars don’t yet have the options that people do, so companies are busy devising creative ways for them to interact with the world outside.

One such company is Google. The multinational tech firm has been granted a patent that details just some of the ways its Self-Driving Car Project could talk to pedestrians. According to the patent, these methods will not only make the vehicle’s intentions clear, they will also determine the correct way to respond to passersby.

The most obvious means of communication that Google’s autonomous cars will use are the ones that we use behind the wheel every day — turn signals, lights, horns, reverse beepers, etc. — only they’ll be controlled by a computer in a driverless car, with a bevy of sensors and cameras determining when they’re appropriate. Google’s other ideas include light-up “walk” or “don’t walk” signs on the car’s body, image displays, and audible signals similar to the ones used at busy crosswalks. Some of the proposals, however, are slightly more bizarre.

“Other types of notification devices may include mechanisms that mimic human behaviors, such as a robotic hand to make gestures or robotic eyes on the vehicle that allow the pedestrian to recognize that the vehicle ‘sees’ the pedestrian,” the patent reads.

Suburban growth and the crossover boom: Why CUVs are here to stay

The year is 2015 and the crossover is king. A class defined by its aim to be several things at once is more popular than ever before, in fact it overtook the sedan last year as the most purchased body style in the United States. And with the space of an SUV, the price of a family car, and the fuel economy of a coupe, that should come as no surprise. What more could you want?

As the segment continues to skyrocket and unlikely brands like Aston Martin and Lotus mull over CUV entries, we’d like to take a short look back at what made these automotive half-breeds so desirable in the first place. For clarity, we’re categorizing crossovers as small, SUV-like vehicles built on car platforms, examples of which you can see in the gallery above. For more on the difference between full-fledged SUVs and crossovers, check out our in-depth breakdown here.

A star is born

Though the term “crossover” wasn’t applied to automobiles until about the turn of century — the product of marketing firms and members of the media — vehicles with the same basic layout appeared much earlier. Subaru introduced the four-wheel drive DL station wagon in 1974, which could “climb like a goat, work like a horse, and eat like a bird,” according to the ads. Sound like a crossover to you? Five years later, AMC partnered with Jeep to create the Eagle, a high-riding hodgepodge that laid the groundwork for the CUVs of today.

As disco came and went and the Berlin wall fell, crossovers began to morph into something closer to what we see on the roads today. One of the best known examples is the Honda CR-V, which debuted in 1997. The CR-V could fit the whole family, offered all-wheel drive, and boasted a generous (for the time) 8.1 inches of ground clearance, yet it was based on a Civic platform and returned up to 23 mpg. Crossovers were officially in, and as they say, the rest is history.

Rockin’ the suburbs

The proliferation of CUVs has been widely influenced by increased suburban growth. Despite what sitcoms and advertisements will tell you, more Americans are leaving the city for quieter, cheaper pastures than entering it, as evidenced by U.S. Census data. In 2014, 529,000 Americans aged 25 to 29 (a crossover’s target audience) moved to the ‘burbs from the city, while 426,000 did the opposite. For younger people, the anti-metropolitan trend was even more pronounced, with 721,000 leaving and 554,000 coming.

Obviously, movements like these have a direct impact of the types of products and services companies offer. Suburbanites need the room of an SUV to haul their kids and their sports equipment across town, but want good fuel economy while doing it. They need ground clearance and towing for the occasional camping trip, but want something easy to drive and park, all while remaining comfortable and somewhat rousing. 

Spares going away, but flat tires aren't

Flat tires still occur every day, but many vehicles no longer come with a spare tire.


For the 2015 model year, only 36 percent of all vehicles come with a spare.
Automakers are omitting the spare tire to boost fuel economy averages. An extra tire increases vehicle weight by about 30 pounds.


That decision could leave more than 30 million drivers stuck on the roadside across the country, according to AAA Mid-Atlantic, the motor club that services the tri-state area.
"Flat tires are not a disappearing problem, but spare tires are," according Mid-Atlantic's Jana Tidwell said.
Despite advances in vehicle technology, she said, tire-related calls have not declined over the last five years.
AAA Mid-Atlantic tow trucks were dispatched to more than 75,000 tire-related rescue calls from January through October, she said. And in 11 percent of those calls, the AAA member did not have a spare tire or did not have a usable spare, resulting in more than 8,000 vehicles being towed. Nationally, AAA responds to more than four million calls for flat tires a year, Tidwell said.
Instead of spare tires in the trunk or under the car, automakers are fitting cars with run-flat tires now. They are the tires on the vehicle that you can continue driving on after a loss of air pressure for a limited distance and at speeds under 55 mph.

Run-flat tires and tire inflation kits have replaced spare tires on more than 29 million vehicles in the last 10 model years, steadily increasing from 5 percent of the 2006 model year vehicles to more than one in three vehicles in model year 2015, AAA said. 
Run-flat tires ride harder and cost more and inflation kits aren't going to help if a tire is a catastrophic failure, said AAA Director of Automotive Engineering and Repair, John Nielsen. And once it is used, a replacement costs about $300, Tidwell added, and has a shelf life of only four to eight years.
John Ryder, AAA Mid-Atlantic territory manager for Approved Auto Repair, said he recently ran into a situation during which a friend's 2007 Volvo had a flat in California, he didn't have a spare and the inflator kit was expired. The car had to be towed from San Francisco to San Jose, he said.
"The car makers took the spares out to save weight and get a very small mileage increase, which most people don't care about," Ryder said. "But when you add up the very small fuel increase and times that by 300,000 cars or so, it gives the car makers higher (corporate average fuel economy) numbers, which must go up every year or they cannot sell gas-hog trucks and SUVs, which most customers want." 

But maybe not having a spare is OK, since many people don't know if they have one or don't know what to do with them, Ryder said.
Ryder said the biggest problem is that most people do not check their spare tire, or even know if they have one. If they don't have one, they should read the vehicle's owner's manual to see if it is equipped with an inflator or the car has run-flat tires.
"The car makers only tell you that a new car has Bluetooth, navigation and other entertainment features. ... Mechanical parts or operation of the vehicle (are) rarely mentioned," at the time of sale, he said.