What Are Staggered Wheels?  Are they Right for Me?

Are you thinking about getting a set of staggered wheels for your car but aren’t sure if they are worth it?  Staggered wheels can make a car have a much more aggressive look than stock.  But are staggered wheels right for you?  What are the benefits and downsides of having staggered wheels?

What Are Staggered Wheels? 

Essentially a staggered wheel setup means that two wheels on a car are wider than the other two wheels.  Typically on rear wheel drive cars (RWD), the back two wheels will be wider than the front two wheels.  Having the wider wheels in the back is by far the most popular type of staggered wheel setup.

Staggered Vs Square Wheel Setups

A square wheel setup means that all four wheels and tires are the same width and diameter.  The main benefit of using a square wheel setup is that it allows you to rotate your wheels and tires from side to side and front to back.

With a staggered wheel setup usually, the back wheels are wider (on a RWD car) which means you wouldn’t want to rotate your wheels and tires from front to back.  Rotating your tires reduces the wear on the tire tread and helps them last longer.

Pros of Staggered Wheels

The main benefit of having staggered wheels on a car is the increased grip on the drive wheels.  Having a staggered wheel setup is critical on high-performance RWD cars to help maintain grip on the rear tires.  The wider your wheel and tires the better grip have because more rubber from the tires will be contacting the road surface.

Having wider tires in the back of a RWD car also promotes understeer, which is the opposite of oversteer which you would expect to encounter in a RWD car.  Having staggered wheels will provide more overall balance to a RWD car especially if it has a ton of horsepower.

Cons of Staggered Wheels

The main disadvantage of having staggered wheels is that you are unable to rotate your wheels and tires from front to back.  You could still rotate your two back wheels from side to side and your two front wheels from side to side

Do Staggered Wheels Improve Handling?

Using a staggered wheel setup can improve the handling of a RWD car by not allowing the rear tires to lose grip as easily (and oversteer) while turning.  Staggered wheels will also provide better straight-line performance and grip because of the increased tire patch width.

If your car can easily break the rear tires loose under heavy acceleration while turning or in a straight line then putting wider wheels and tires in the rear can keep this from happening.  This will allow you to accelerate through turns and from a dead stop without having to worry about spinning out into a ditch.

Can You Put Staggered Wheels on a Front Wheel Drive Car?

While most cars with staggered wheels will put the wider wheels on the rear of the car, you can also put the wider staggered wheels on the front to help increase the grip of a front-wheel-drive car.  Let’s say that you have a front-wheel-drive car that you take to the drag strip but it struggles to grip the drag strip with your current wheel and tire setup.  In that case, putting on a wider wheel and tire on your front wheels can increase grip and allow you to launch your car better from a standstill.

Staggered Wheels on AWD Cars

Can you put staggered wheels on an AWD car and should you?  After doing some research on Subaru forums it seems that you can run staggered wheels on an AWD car as long as they use the same size tire.  Which kind of defeats the purpose of staggered wheels.

Staggered wheels on an AWD car can make it look better but is generally not recommended because of the potential issues and damage it can cause with an AWD car’s center differential.  Adding wider wheels and tires to an AWD car can also induce understeer and hurt the overall performance of an AWD car.

Related Questions

Do Wider Tires Wear Faster? Wider tires themselves will not wear faster, it all comes down to the tire compound used to make the tires.  On the side of your tires, you will see a treadwear rating.

The treadwear rating signifies how well the tire compound will hold up over time.  The higher the treadwear rating the longer that tire should last without needing to be replaced.

Do Wider Tires Mean More Grip?  For the most part yes, wider tires do mean increased grip, but that’s not the whole part of the equation.  The tire compound used in your tires will also affect the level of grip that you get out of your tires.

A lower treadwear rating on a tire means that it will be softer and will be better at gripping the surface of the road.  A higher treadwear rating means that the tire compound will be harder and stiffer and won’t be able to grip the road surface as well.

Usually, the lower the treadwear rating of the tire means that it will provide more grip.  The main tradeoff is that you will need to replace the tire quicker than a higher treadwear rated tire. With tires, there are always tradeoffs between increased longevity and increased grip.

Are Wider Tires Better in Rain? When it comes to grip in the rain it all comes down to the tire tread and how it was developed.  Many passenger or all-season tires will plenty of sipes to wick water away from the surface of the tire to allow the tire to maintain contact with the road.

High performance or summer tires on the other hand typically don’t have as many sipes and will be designed to provide as much grip in dry conditions as possible.  Unfortunately, this will typically translate to poor wet performance.

Are Wider Tires Better in Snow? When it comes to snow and ice you want to have narrow tires to be able to cut through the snow and ice to be able to get down to the road surface.  The wider your wheels and tires the more surface area they will need to dig through in order to get contact with the road.

If you live in an area that gets a lot of snow but still wants to get staggered wheels I’d recommend having another set of wheels and tires (that are narrower) to use during the winter months.  That way you can have the best of both worlds.