Originally Posted by novadude
Question for CapriRacer....
How much of tread design is "Engineering" vs "Marketing". Just knowing how stuff works in the manufacturing world, I'd imagine the marketing folks probably have a pretty strong hand in the tire appearance, depending on the segment of the market they are targeting. After all, consumers in the market for a performance tire (for example) want a tire that looks like a cool "performance" tire, and not grandmas all-season passenger car tire tread, even if the "grandma" tread performs.
Let me describe the process:
When marketing says its time for an update on a particular tire line, the first step is to get the artistic folks to draw up possible tread patterns. The engineers will give them design limitations, such as the amount of edges, the width of the grooves, or whatever parameters they've figured out result in the properties they want. The result is usually much more pleasing than what the engineers would have designed.
Then there are a series of meetings with the marketing folks to sort out what works for them and what doesn't. Usually it's 2 or 3 meetings.
Please note that these meetings also discuss the performance targets - wet traction, dry traction, snow traction, ride and handling, rolling resistance etc. At the end of those meetings, a prime candidate is selected - and sometimes more than one.
If there is some conflict about what works and what doesn't, the engineering folks can always have a blank tire hand cut. Sometimes this is just for display to get a feel for the overall affect - and sometimes they will do testing on hand cut samples. The problem with hand cut samples is that they always look better than production, and their actual performance is either worse or better depending on which test is being performed. Snow traction is always better on hand cut tires, because the edges are sharper.
If everyone is in agreement about the overall pattern, then the molds are order, test tires made and the testing begins. There will be periodic meetings with marketing where the test results are shared and any thing unexpected is discussed. There was this one time where the snow traction was sooooo good, it required a retest. I won't bore you with the details, but if you look at the bottom of the grooves of some tires, you may notice ridges and those are there because of that.
Please note that I have described the process inside one company, but since my experience working with Ford resulted in pretty much the same procedure, I assume every tire manufacturer does something similar.
So it isn't that the marketing folks rule - or the engineers rule. These things are compromises and the question is what compromise works best - and the marketing folks generally have the best feel for what is needed.
