Potenza's - Where to get them?
 

I've been checking out the price/availability of the stock tyres that come on the Tour (lease requirements). They are Bridgestone Potenza RE040 in two sizes (probably as we all know).

I phoned a couple of chain stores (Bob Janes and Beaurepaires) and was dismayed to be told that they aren't sold in Australia at all.

BJ's phoned Bridgestone and were told that they were an imported tyre and Nissan had made no requests for them to stock the tyre locally. In fact I was told that there were only two of the 225/50's in the whole of the country and none of the 235/50's at all. The alternatives were a Bridgestone G3 on the front and a Pirelli P6000 on the back ($650 each!). Totally mismatched and not worth considering. Not a good thing.

I've fronted up to my local Nissan dealer who is fulfilling my order in a few weeks and asked him about this problem. He was unaware (or unwilling to admit) that there was an issue and would chase it up. No reply as yet.

Has anyone else in Oz come up on the same problem or a solution?

I hope I don't shred a tyre soon.

S-Dog

Update on the Potenza's
 

I spent quite a bit of time on the blower last week, the end result is that I can confirm an ongoing delivery of Potenza RE040 tyres in all sizes to local dealers.

The story goes that I first got a knock back from Bob Janes and Goodyear etc, saying the tyres weren't stocked . Bridgestone confirmed this in the Melbourne state office and no request from Nissan had been made to do so. The state manager tried to get some delivered from Japan, he was refused a delivery, no details given.

So I called Nissan HO Customer Tech Support. They were most surprised and couldn't believe that this was so, they'd get back to me after checking it out. They called back about an hour later to say that they had found four tyres, one of each size in the whole of the country, whoo hoo I thought, lotta help to the 350Z community at large that will be.

So I called the National office of Bridgestone in South Australia. I spoke to a helpful guy (really) by the name of Stanley Toh who had heard of this shortage (from Nissan I suspect) and was personally looking into it. Later that evening he called back to say that an initial delivery of 20 of each RE040 size was winging it's way as we spoke and a delivery of another 20 would come over in regular periods depending on demand.

Expect your local dealer to stock them very soon.

S-Dog