wrote:

MOST bike tires are optimistically labelled!!!! I bought Conti
Contact in 32 and they are at most 28. Top Touring @ 37 are maybe
35. Panaracer Urban max are uner size as well. Why cant they just
label them honestly!!!!!!

Mislabeling tires became common practice in the '80s after it was
found easier to lighten a tire by making it smaller than by other
means. My wife's "700x28" Conti Ultra-Super-Duper-Sports are more
like 26mm wide, for instance.

Panaracer Paselas used to be as guilty of this as any other tire-- all
the 32s I have ever bought were actually 28s, and all the 35s were in
fact 32s.

Sheldon Brown mentioned this phenomenon in his article on tire
sizing:

http://sheldonbrown.com/tire-sizing.html#dishonest

Chalo