New Davanti Ecoura HP1 tyres for the Proton Satria GTi

It hasn't been plain sailing for the Proton Satria GTi, which arrived on the Petrolblog fleet in November 2023. My son purchased it for his eighteenth birthday, attracted by the combination of surprisingly low insurance, rarity, styling and Lotus handling. Officially it's a Compact GTi, the name used until Proton adopted the Satria name in 2001.

The first problem was an ABS fault, which took a long time and a considerable amount of money to sort, but the biggest issue was the corrosion, which threatened to send the car to an early grave. Indeed, the cost of the welding meant that the car spent a year off the road, before passing an MOT in April of this year.

We knew the tyres were on the limit of roadworthiness, being both old and low on tread. They were a matching set, but the hardened rubber served only to worsen the already harsh ride of the Lotus-tuned hot hatch. We weren't surprised when the tyres were listed as an advisory on the MOT certificate. A good excuse to fit some new rubber, then.

Which is why the Proton is now running on a set of Davanti Ecoura HP1 tyres. Launched in February 2025, the Ecoura HP1 is a mid-range, high-performance tyre designed for standard cars, so it will be interesting to see how it performs on a hot hatch launched around the turn of the millennium. As a guide, you'll pay £87.50 per tyre (including fitting) at one of the ETB Autocentres in the UK.

If tyre labels are your thing, the Davanti Ecoura (not to be confused with the spiritual medium Derek Acorah) is rated C for rolling resistance, B for wet grip, and A for rolling noise (68dB). A good set of ratings.

First impressions are excellent; there's considerably less tyre noise than before and the ride quality has improved to the extent that we no longer have the chiropractor's telephone number on our list of favourites. Dry grip is good, although we haven't been able to test it in the wet; old Japanese cars tend to dissolve in the rain, even those enhanced by Norfolk and Malaysia.

It's early days, of course, so we'll report back once we've completed a dawn raid across the moors.

Regular readers will know that Petrolblog invests in three things when it buys a new (old) car: tyres, windscreen wipers and upgraded headlight bulbs. The Davanti rubber completes the set and is a positive step forward after the ABS and welding nightmares.