There’s been a glaring hole in the BFGoodrich product lineup for a long time: the ultra-high performance summer tire. These are meant to be tires that offer fabulous performance without the fussiness of the most extreme summer rubber, like needing to be warmed up, the inability to displace rain, and a short service life. That’s been solved with the BFGoodrich g-Force Phenom T/A.
Our friends at BFGoodrich sent us a set of these new shoes to evaluate on my Mazda MX-5 Miata — a former press vehicle I decided to keep. I’m still head-over-heels in love with the car, but the factory summer tires always bothered me. I always felt were a little too edgy and broke traction too suddenly, to a point where I almost had more fun with it on its winter tires. On a car that otherwise feels as though it was divined by the Gods, the stock shoes were the only thing that had me wondering, “what were you thinking?”
These Phenoms solved that problem neatly, but for posterity’s sake, I’ll spell out some facts first. My Miata is a GS-P trim — or Club, if you’re reading this from the U.S. — with the Sport package. This means factory-fitted 17-inch BBS wheels and Bridgestone Potenza S001 tires, among other bits. I’ve lowered it a touch on Swift springs, and added 15-millimetre spacers to fill the wheel wells a bit better.
I opted for a slightly oversized fitment at 215/45/17 all around, installed them myself with a Hunter Maverick tire machine, and balanced them myself with a Hunter Road Force balancer. The worst one took two ounces of weights to balance, but the others were around an ounce. I set the tire pressure to 34 psi and have covered 2,000 kilometres with the Phenoms so far in mixed conditions, including wet and dry roads, single-digit temperatures, and hot summer days.
The first thing I noticed is that they look great. In my eyes, the relatively plain sidewall contributes to a utilitarian — read: race car — style broken up by a shark-tooth tread pattern that eats into the edges of the tire. With its smooth sidewalls and relatively round shoulders, it looks like a dedicated track tire, and everyone around the office says the looks tough. It only looks tougher when the wheels are canted and the aggressive tread pattern reveals itself.
Despite looking so very sporty, the Phenom’s core mantra is to deliver a well rounded end-user experience, because serious summer tires can kind of suck. There’s usually some major holdup with them; they’re they’re too soft and wear out too fast, or they’re too hard and are useless on anything other than hot, dry pavement — or downright sketchy in the rain. These Phenoms are meant to be a well-rounded tire that’s good at everything, which is an ambitious ask, but they seem to have pulled it off.
So I mount these tires, I bolt them on the car, and they look great. I’m stoked. I pull it out of the garage, promptly do a donut in the parking lot, and head out for a quick test ride. It’s not a nice day: cool, damp, and it just stopped raining about an hour before. Instantly I noticed the car rode approximately a million times better, telling my colleagues my Miata rides like a cushy Cadillac. Bumps on our usual test loop that used to send a horrifying crack through the chassis were reduced to mild thump. I’m sure a lot of that is down to the fact that the stock Bridgestones are run-flats and these aren’t, but it stuck out and still does. Rough roads don’t scare me anymore, which is kind of huge.
While my Miata rides almost kind of like a cushy Cadillac, it certainly doesn’t handle like one. If I’m being completely honest, the steering feel is ever-so-slightly less crispy than the undersized run-flats previously on there, but the way it handles itself is a delight. A dialed-in featherweight like a Miata accentuates any deficiencies in feel, and these Phenoms communicate beautifully under all conditions. They only getting better as they’re pushed harder. If you’re worried these will feel weird on your Miata, Mustang, or whatever else, don’t fret. The Phenoms have a stiff sidewall and communicate well.
My number-one complaint about my Miata before these tires went on was how it behaved when I was trying to really hustle. It handled well and had piles of grip under ideal conditions, but always felt edgy and didn’t inspire a ton of confidence when trying to really hustle it and kick out the back end. It was a big contrast to the Toyota GR86 Trueno and its Michelin Pilot Sport 4 shoes I reviewed last year. It felt far more progressive, but that’s no longer the case.
There’s tons of grip available with the Phenoms. Despite the Miata’s factory Bridgestones being rated as a softer, stickier compound with a notoriously short service life, it doesn’t feel like I’ve given anything up in terms of performance. I can push these Phenoms just as hard, if not harder, and they give way much more gently when pushed too far. Their transient handling behaviour is forgiving and predictable, and they don’t need to be hot to feel right.
They don’t need to be dry, either. BFGoodrich has deployed a new rubber compound embedded with silica to enhance traction in cool and wet conditions, and it’s paid dividends. BFGoodrich’s own testing points to better wet weather braking performance than the Yokohama Advan Apex V601, Hankook Ventus V12 Evo, and the extremely popular Firestone Firehawk Indy 500. These Phenoms, with their slim shoulder blocks and aggressive tread pattern, don’t look like they should be able to multi-task the way they can, but they absolutely do.
Some summer tires can feel a little sketchy in the sub-optimal spring and fall conditions we’re routinely subjected to in Canada. These Phenoms sidestep that without giving up what makes them so effective on dry pavement. This is all the more effective given that they carry a treadwear rating of 380, among the hardiest of all summer tires available at the moment, and seemingly without any real compromise. For whatever it’s worth, all Phenom tires are constructed in the U.S.
Perhaps most importantly, these BFGoodrich g-Force Phenom T/A tires are available in 50 sizes as of this writing, most of which are on the wider side of the spectrum to meet the demands of enthusiasts — like my own oversize tires. They’re built to be relatively affordable, either matching their direct competition while offering more capability, or undercutting top-shelf tires without giving much of anything up. As far as I can tell, BFGoodrich absolutely succeed. They’re advertised as the best single upgrade you can do to your car, and they’ve been a huge upgrade on mine.
