Reproduction Vs. Genuine Goodyear Eagle GT Comparison

[69hurstolds]

It's been a good while since I did a comparison with the genuine GT vs the repro. Kelsey Tire remakes them, and now the prices are $500-ish for just one tire. Meaning that you can read this as this is a tire for that "next level" in restoration. You simply wouldn't typically buy this tire to just drive around in. Unless you got money to spare. $2K for a set of "so-so" wayback machine tires isn't cost-effective, that's all I'm saying.

At first glance, you would think it was 1982 all over again. My first go-round with the ROWL Eagle GT was on a new 1982 Camaro Z28 I ordered from Glen's Chevrolet in Pocatello, Idaho. Dark blue with dark blue velour interior.

Went down memory lane for this one. Here's what's left of the dealership. You can see the "pad" out near the road where the big, tall Chevrolet sign used to be mounted. Picked up my new car right in front of the show room steps.

Speaking of, I recalled they had "Chevrolet bowtie" shaped handrails on those steps, and sure enough, they're still there.

But I digress. The Eagle GTs were mediocre performance tires at best. Better than the bread n butter radial, but not super-great. Good looking tire, though. They looked like a performance tire, but in reality, they were just a wider tire with soft rubber that was pretty good on dry pavement, but they would peel off the rubber if you had a car that could even remotely spin them. GM seemed to put them on everything performance back then.

So I'm sure they haven't changed the molds on the new tires, so I'm figuring I'm pretty safe to show the minor differences that probably still exist today. Not that they're bad, because from 20 feet away, you'll just be amazed they're a GT and not a GT II in that fact alone.

For the most part, they got the tires pretty close to spot on. And here they are. Repro on left, "NOS" genuine Goodyear one on right.

The NOS ones I have I believe (don't hold me to it) are a tad earlier than the repro is depicting. What I mean is that at least for 1982 or 83-up, the Eagle GT has the tire performance criteria, aka "TPC" code patch strip under the size pasted there. I don't know exactly when that got on there, but most of them had it. The NOS set does not. I have to look at the date codes again.

And then, who can forget about the Eagle GTII. It's a different tire than the GT, and I believe it actually rode better and wasn't as mushy. JMO.

 

[69hurstolds]

Repro on left. NOS on right. Note the variance in the tread block sizes. Until I looked at them, I didn't even know that was a thing.

Letter spacing is nice and even on the genuine deal (bottom). The repro (top) has a few spots where the letters are closer together. Hard to tell at 20 feet.

Hmmm. Genuine GT on top. Have to look at some others I have. It appears the later ones had 5 plys. 2 polyester, 2 steel and 1 nylon. Interesting too that another place on the tire shows 2 polyester, 2 steel, and 1 nylon. That's 5 on my calculator. WTF?

4111 date code on the repro. Meaning 41st week of 2011. (Oct 10-16). Starting in 2000, tires got TWO digits for the year.

The gennie GT says 254, or 25th week of (1984?) I'm guessing? Can't be '74. I doubt it was '94, but I don't recall when they stopped making Eagle GTs for sure. I know they still made them in 1992, but after that, I'm not sure.

Another spacing issue comes with the A to R being closer on the repro. Again, very slight, but it's there.

You can see it better here. Repro in front.

To summarize, the tires are ALMOST a spitting image of the real ones. Same tread, same soft rubber, and a very nice look to them overall. General passerbys will NOT NOTICE that they're repros. But now YOU know what to look for, you'll be able to spot a repro vs. a genuine Goodyear Eagle GT from at least 8 paces. Impress your friends, and tick off that guy who claims they're NOS tires.