I came across motoring oddity this week after checking the tyre pressures on my car before a long journey. The pressures on the fuel cap sticker for the car are in Bar and my trusty pressure gauge (a Lidl special from about 10 years ago) is only in PSI – or at least it is without some magical button pressing for which the documentation disappeared several years ago. As I result I check the pressures online.
When I checked the tyres they all seemed to be quite a bit below the 36PSI recommended. I thought this was a bit odd and checked the manual again and it is actually recommended as 29PSI for the standard Golf – the 36PSI is for the Bluemotion model due to its “special low rolling resistance tyres”. Fair enough, but what are these special tyres, I wondered.
As it happens, one of my neighbours has the Bluemotion model so I checked what tyres it has fitted. It turns out that it has exactly the same tyres as mine: Goodyear Excellence. I did check to see if there was a special variant available and they do have a VW specification which does indeed have slightly lower rolling resistance but these are what I have fitted.
Of course the Bluemotion tyres will have a lower rolling resistance then the standard ones but this is nothing to do the wonders of material science but simply due to gas laws – they have pumped up the tyres to a higher pressure and this will have led to the reduction in fuel consumption – and presumably a slightly harsher ride. I think the Bluemotion models do have other tweaks to them but the wheels will be one of the major enhancements. Rather than spending several hundred pounds on a vehicle upgrade the same effect could be achieved with five minutes and a foot pump.
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