Kumho's Scented Tires

I've always been a fairly strict utilitarian when it comes to vehicle features and design. Useless gingerbread and eye-candy don't do much for me. I had a conniption the other day when I got an up-close look at the new Mustang Shelby GT. This car is a veritable poster-child for useless tacked-on styling trinkets. Hood scoop? Non-functional. Side-scoops? Also non-functional. Hood Pins? Well, arguably functional, but since the car has a conventional and fully-operational hood latch, I'll also put them in the "non-fucntional" category. There were probably more offending items still, but I was too enraged at the time by the gratuitous and patronizing tacked-on bric-a-brac to take notice.

About a week later, a co-worker sends me a story about Kumho's new Ecsta DX tires. Now, as a compact enthusiast, I've known about Kumho tires for quite a while, and know they're a favorite of autocrossers and club racers for their competitve dry-pavement performance as well as their low price. (Heck, I'm running a set of them right now on my daily driver!) So Kumho has some built-in enthusiast cred in my book. But when I read about the defining characteristic of the DX line, Kumho got knocked down a notch or two on my cred list.

You see, the DX's claim to fame is its lavender scent. Yes, the same as that of many shampoos and body washes. In the press release for the tires, Kumho is claiming functional benefits from the addition of the aromatic agent, including, "...heat-resistant oils are said to enhance the bonding of rubber chains and maximize the viscoelasticity of the rubber compound, which helps reduce braking distances on wet or dry roads. The Ecsta DX Aroma compound also features silica to improve all-weather performance and wet traction."

Said to enhance? Wow. That really sounds like a ringing, empirical endorsement of the functionality of the lavender scent. Now, if from exhaustive testing, the lavender-scented additive is shown to improve performance beyond a shadow of a doubt, I'll be at the front of the parade touting the benefits of girlie-scented tires, and advocating their use on all vehicles.

But for a tenuous stretch to try to justify the use of perfume in tires for some nebulous perceived benefit, I'll stick to the good ol' stinky vulcanized rubber tires for now.

(blogs.modified.com)