(empo-plaaybizz) Making tires cool

When boys (and some girls) are growing up, they talk about cars a lot. Perhaps they'll have favorite makes - Ford for one, Mercedes for another. Perhaps they'll talk about the color of the car. As boys become men and girls become women, they begin looking at other aspects of the car, such as fuel consumption.

And there are a lot of games associated with cars. You can turn on your TV and watch cars racing around tracks. You can go to the store and buy Hot Wheels or model cars or other car-related toys.

But cars, at least as currently designed, would go nowhere if they didn't have wheels on them. And most of the wheels in use today have tires.

Did any of you talk tire traction when you were growing up? I doubt it.

But the Riverside Press-Enterprise notes that tire companies such as Kumho and Continental are aiming to change that. The Kumho application, described on Kumho's "Kumho Tire Drive" Facebook page, will be available shortly on various Apple platforms, and should eventually be available for Android. As you equip your car, Kumho reminds you of one important thing that you must do:

Put on some Kumho Tires. Make sure you always equip both wet and dry performance Tires.

But Kumho was beaten to the punch by Continental, with its ContiTireRace application for Apple platforms.

The goal of the game is to take the race track with ContiWinterContact TS 830 as quickly as possible, collecting valuable points along the way that give the rolling tires additional speed and thus better lap times. The race can be “run” using either the keys or by tilting the phone. Snowy and icy roads suitable to the season and winter tire model make it all the more exciting.

Now let's see if the windshield wiper vendors get into the act.