General consensus on wheel sizes?

[landrovered]

It all boils down to physics. Turning is a product of tire deflection and the balance is struck between sidewall height and grip. I personally think that ultra thin sidewalls look bad and they have less ability to deflect due to the physical limit imposed by their smaller size. That being said a huge sidewall is not going to necessarily going to turn better because of the forces will not be as efficiently transfered to the wheel as with a moderate sidewall. Like I said it is a balance.

A practical example of this is modern racing tires. If tiny thin sidewalls were faster then every F1 car would be on wheels with rubber bands glued to them but they are not. Look at racing cars for the most efficient tire construction in terms of wheel size to sidewall/contact patch.

F1 rules state that the front tire must be between 305-355 mm wide with a maximum diameter of 660 mm. These are on 13" rims. The ratio of width to diameter is roughly 1 to 2 with the rim being roughly equal to the width. In short the tires are square. The sidewall height of the F1 tires is roughly equal in proportion to that of a "50" street tire.

So the most badass cars in the world are running on schweet 330/50/13s, how is that going to hang on the street?