Second hand car sold with wrong tyres on

AdrianC

Or just open the door and look at the tyre pressure sticker in the shut. It will tell you exactly what size and rating YOUR car left the factory wearing.

Then look at the VIN plate under the bonnet, and the maximum loads per axle. Halve the heavier of those, and check it against a load rating chart.

Westmead_Fan

the most likely reason is that 205/55r16 are common tyre sizes & are cheap to buy compared to the 21/55r16 which are less common.

AdrianC

But, anyway, to get back to the original question... No, this isn't a SOGA issue, and you'll get nowhere with the vendor.

Even if you could, the wrong load-rated tyre was worn out. This is basic maintenance and wear'n'tear, which SOGA doesn't cover. Even if the tyre wore unusually rapidly, you've had the car three months - excessively rapid wear would have been visible much earlier. How much tread was on that tyre at purchase?

There is also no legal requirement to have the "right size" tyres on - we have no TuV-style requirements here - only that you have tyres which are not actively unsuitable for the fitment. It is very unlikely that such a marginal reduction in tread width would have rendered them unsuitable for the rim width, and the load rating and speed rating were correct. The different rolling radius would not have put the speedo so far out of accuracy as to be a C&U issue.

Strider590

Did it have the original wheels? Sometimes people get same size alloy wheels fitted and then stupidly fit lower profile tyres, making it almost impossible to figure out what should really be fitted!