What happened to the Optima Sports Camber Tire?

Very early this year, I read about this new technology being developed by John Robinson Scott at his company Optima Sports. His tire is different in that it has camber built in and resembles a cone shape. He gives a long list of benefits, but the one that we should care about the most is the ability to pull more G’s when cornering.

You can check out their website here: http://www.cambertire.com/

I have to note that this is possibly the worst website that I have ever seen as far as layout goes. It looks like they are even using their web designers concept/preview images on the page! If this is the image their company wants to convey, it’s sure not confidence inspiring.

I have to admit that these tires really don’t make a lot of sense to me. Since it would seem that if you were to put more negative camber in the suspension to have these tires lay flat against the tarmac, it would just cancel a lot of their effect. They may also get some sort of unequal length control arm effect from the sidewalls of the tire being different heights; but I’m not sure how that would play into this exactly. It would also seem that the camber of the tires would have to be going the other way to get a benefit from that.

Anyway, although I’m skeptical of these tires; I am eager to hear news on their product. Autoweek did an interview with Mr. Scott last month (which can be found here), but the interview didn’t really reveal any new developments and was essentially the same as the one that was on Jay Leno’s Garage over the summer. You should also check the comments sections in these two links because Mr. Scott has left some comments and was even drawn into a troll.

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