From the beginning of my project, I kind of figured I'd go with 17" x 9.5" wheels on the back and 17" x 9" in the front. Now that I'm to the point of selecting tires & wheels, I'm having a hard time finding something I like that comes in both sizes as well as the proper offset. I think I've decided to stick with one size wheel, not sure if that will be 9" or 9.5" yet.

Anyway, I was contemplating just going with a slightly wider tire in the back. I know that you can't rotate them then, but this car is not a daily driver and I won't be putting many miles on it.

Just wondering what kind of performance hit (if any) I'll take if I go this route and also if there is a maximum width difference I should stay under. Thanks.

width is is very minimal and it depends on tiresize you plan to run front vs rears but technically you can run same tiresize all around which defeats the purpose IMO of running a staggered setup

What tire size you plan to run ?

ill say run 9.5 all around call it a day, and ability to rotate ... shocks and tire selection are both important for example a car with koni equavilent with sticky tires on 17x8 wheel has the ability to outperform a car with worn out / cheap shocks and with cheap noname tires on 17x9.5

have to look at complete picture and what you ultimate goals are going to be you would be happy with whatever decision you make tho

I had a hard time too finding a set of matching tires for my staggared wheels that I just bought. I went with 18X8 and 18X9.5. I knew that I wanted a 245/40/18 for the front so I searched tirerack.com for that size. When I would click on a specific tire, it would pull it up and also show other sizes available for that specific tire. That's how I found my combo. After about an hour of looking I found mine. The rears are 265/35/18. The wheel could definatly hold a wider tire though, next time....

i would say atleast a 275 or even a 285 for 9.5 wheel

but 265-285 will work fine just depends on look you want

I totally agree. I wish that I would have gone a little wider, but there were 2 factors that helped me decide. One is that I was really worried that they were going to rub, especially since it's about to get lowered....and two..The 265's were on clearance/closeout and were considerably cheaper than the 275's and 285's (like $50/tire cheaper)
Next set will be wider though, now that I see them on the car I can see that the wheels NEED wider tires and they don't look like they'll rub.

My point really wasn't supposed to be about me. I was just letting him know that he can pick one size to search for and then see other sizes that are aavailable in that specific tire.

yea they will fit but its good for OP to know if he decideds to lower
i have sprortlines springs and 18x10, 285/35 all around if you have your wheel fitment on point then you can fit wider wheels

from another thread seems he is interested in a 17" wheel like CTW and the tire selection is vast

lol i agree