BFGoodrich G-Force Phenom Tire Review: A Great Sporty Street Tire That Works When Wet
BFGoodrich's new summer sport tire showed us nicely progressive grip at track speeds and impressive wet-weather performance. The post BFGoodrich G-Force Phenom Tire Review: A Great Sporty Street Tire That Works When Wet appeared first on The Drive.
If you’re into driving, BFGoodrich’s new G-Force Phenom summer tires should be on your radar. This new line of rubber is dropping into a particularly hot segment: Daily drivable performance tires that aren’t wildly expensive. The bang-for-buck value proposition is strong. And, after a couple of days of track testing, I’d happily run them on any of my sporty cars.
BFGoodrich G-Force Phenom Briefing
The new BFG Phenom is a high-performance summer tire best suited to sports cars that get driven hard. It’s meant to maximize grip in street driving conditions. It could hang for a track day or HPDE session, but it isn’t meant for racing. It’s a warm-weather compound and should not be driven in or stored in the cold.
The architecture of the Phenom is a stiff sidewall with shallow shoulder blocks. Offset shoulder grooves are designed to provide better feedback at the limit while enhancing cornering stability. A stiff sidewall will, of course, make for a harsher ride over bumps, but the upside is that it’s better at resisting deflection for good turning response.
The tread pattern is effectively separated into a wet zone and a dry zone, with flat areas on the outside for dry grip and more grooves on the inside to eject water. Deep sipes, those little cuts in the tire that help it retain some flexibility, are internally textured, which BFG claims leads to better multi-condition flexibility.
Chemically, BFG’s people told us that more silica was added to the mix (tires are made of more than 200 chemicals—there’s a lot more to it than just “rubber”), which is supposedly key to yielding the improved wet-weather performance without reducing tread life.
Applications and Availability
BFGoodrich Phenoms come in a huge range of standard car sizes, with fitments for 16- through 20-inch wheels. The BFG site has the complete size breakdown. A set of four in the OE size for a current-gen Miata, 205/45ZR17, is listing at $563.96 on TireRack right now. Phenoms come with BFG’s six-year limited warranty and a “60-Day Satisfaction Guarantee,” which means you can return the tires to where you got them within 60 days of buying them and trade them for a different set of equal or lesser value.
The way the warranty works is that if the tire fails prematurely, you get a partial refund based on how used the tires are after your shop removes them. I dealt with this a few years back when I was running BFG Comp 2 summer tires (the Phenom’s predecessor) on my old Acura. After a few years, I observed some odd splitting on the sidewalls and ended up getting a few bucks back when I brought the car in. Just keep all your receipts, track your mileage, and return to the same tire shop you got your tires installed and they should take care of you. Practically speaking, it’s like a discount on replacements if the tires fail in ways they shouldn’t.
As of this writing, loads of Phenom sizes seem to be in stock all over the place. You should have no trouble getting your hands on a set.
Testing Conditions
Driving Notes
I can only report on how these tires ride at the middle to upper end of their stress level, rather than road comfort. We did quite a few laps at Sonoma, in dry conditions and light rain, plus some skidpad exercises, but no street driving. Road noise? Never heard of her—only the biggest tire squeals were audible over the engine and interior clatter of the gutted rental race cars we were driving.
The Great
Wet-weather braking is BFG’s main stat advantage here. That’s certainly important if you live outside the Southwest.
The most enticing aspect about these tires to me is their value for money. Since the Phenom is a new name in a scene with a lot of brand loyalty, BFG is pricing these aggressively to get people to try them out. Not to make you skip the whole rest of this review, but if your tire shop is offering good deals on these, I say cop ’em with confidence. The main competitors being undercut on price are Falken Azenis FK510, Yokohama Advan Apex C601, and Firestone Indy 500 Firehawks, only the last of which I’ve run on my own cars.
I also think the Phenoms look pretty cool. If you’re the kind of person who cares about the aesthetics of tread design, you might find the clean blocks and grooves appealing.
The Good
I felt a consistent gradient in how these tires felt below me. Locked into a donut on a skidpad, it was pretty easy to tell when they got close to breaking loose. Doing the same exercise on Indy 500s, traction dropped off a little more steeply. On the road, that linear feel of grip makes it easier to sense danger before you really lose traction, making it a little safer to drive harder.
In other words, I really liked the way they seemed to gradually release their grip on the road, rather than feeling good until completely snapping, which I’ve seen some other mid-range summer sport tires do. I’m not an inexperienced track driver, but I’m pretty cautious and certainly no competitive racer. In just a couple of short days doing track driver training, the Phenoms were helping me build confidence without scaring myself too much.
The Not-So-Good
As far as what I could discern in our brief brand-sanctioned track test, the only apparent disadvantages to the Phenoms are simply the inherent downside to summer performance tires in general. They won’t take well to being cold, so don’t leave them outside in the winter, and don’t expect the best gas mileage with grippy rubber like this. Generally speaking, high-performance tires are here for a good time, not a long time, so if your priorities are maximum economy or super-long tread life, you should be shopping in another category.
BFG’s people were confident you could do a track day or two on these without using them up, but they’re definitely built for street driving, not competition.
The Verdict
BFGoodrich is best known for its off-road products, but you can trace its on-road performance pedigree back to Le Mans and IMSA racing in the ’80s. Even before that, BFG had the 60-series radial T/A in 1969.
Based on brand history and pricing alone, the new Phenom is worth checking out for spirited street driving and daily duties on a performance car. They’re not the absolute peak of grip, and they don’t offer all-season flexibility, but I was pleased with how consistent and comfortable they felt under a race-prepped fifth-gen Mustang. And I love the idea of a sport tire that prioritizes rain performance.
Where I live in the Northeast, the weather’s constantly changing. If I do a long drive in mid-summer, I might go from dry to drenched in the same day. Running a set of Phenoms, I’d be confident to keep pressing on as the road got wet.
Have you driven on these or comparable tires? Tell us about them in the comments or hit us up at tips@thedrive.com.
The post BFGoodrich G-Force Phenom Tire Review: A Great Sporty Street Tire That Works When Wet appeared first on The Drive.
