At 15+ year old the rubber bushes in the suspension will be rock hard and will affect the compliance to a degree. If you can DIY the bushes are not normally expensive but without a lift and press tools they can be impossible to change, its really a garage job and the labour will not be cheap.

With regards to the tyres any over 10 years old should really be thrown away. They may look OK but they will have degraded over the years and its impossible to know what the carcass is really like. Some companies suggest a max of 6 years but personally on a low mileage car that has been garaged I see no issue with 10 years providing you inspect them regularly for cracking in the tread and on the sidewalls (inside and out). If the car is kept in the sun definitely 6 years max.

But £200 for a pair, what size are they? Last time I bought tyres was for our Focus, 205 55 16. I bought mid range tyres (never noticed any difference between these and top range) but I would never buy "ditchfinders" from China etc. All the tests find them poor in the wet and its then you really need them to be good. Brand. I have had have been Uniroyal, Khumo, Hankook, Marshall, Bridgestone. 4 Khumhos fitted on the focus were £205.

Of the 5 brands mentioned above I think Uniroyal had the softest sidewalls but that may have changed. Bridgestones were definitely the hardest. Speak to a local tyre shop but beware, they will try and sell you a set of the tyres they make most profit on and they are normally ditchfinders.

But I suppose it all depends if you are intending to keep the car. If its going in a few months just carry on, carefully.

I have an older 15+ year old car, reliable, low mileage, low user. Town and trunk road driving.

However, the suspension feels hard, when I got over bump and gutters. Sometimes the steering moves over gutters. My previous car (of the same make/model), would have felt very little. The mechanic (at reception) thinks they may have revised the suspension.

If you have owned it for ten years, your own suspension will have aged as well, and you will perhaps feel bumps and jarring more acutely than when you were younger.

The tyres are fairly old, perhaps 10+ years (from the date code).

Will buying new tyres help?

Probably not.

Just wondering if my tyres are like old boots, and too hard.

They do harden with age. I remember my 20yr old Goodyears on my TR7 seemed to have lost some of their original grip, especially in the wet.

Don't want to waste £200 on a pair of tyres

They run at less than half the pressure in relatively thin flimsy old bicycle tyres, so they are not suddenly going to go 'pop', unless you run them at high speed and dangerously low pressure.

For me, owning a 16yo car, the ride quality varies (taking out the varitaion in the roads In drive on), dependent upon:

1. The weather - there's a reasonable difference between that for a cold and warm day, or dry and damp conditions;

2. How often I've been driving it lately - reasonable use means moving parts move more easily than if the car has been sitting around for weeks on end.

3. How recently any suspension parts have been changed or been flagged up as getting near or requiring replacement, such as control arms and bushes, as TB and JF have mentioned, but also the prings and dampers themselves will wear with age and usage, especially if your driving pattern takes the car over speed humps regularly or the road surfaces are poor (potholes, etc).

All the above is compounded (punintended) by the size and age/condition of your car's tyres. A higher profile tyre fitted on smaller wheels will help take more of the strain from the suspension parts and give a more comfortable ride than lower profile tyres shod on larger wheels.

About 4 years ago, one of my alloy wheels had corrodede sufficiently that the tyre fitted to it was leaking (the other wheels were going the same way), and as the tyres were only 3 months away from when I would normally (back then*) change them by age (normally at 6yo*, I thought of changing both the 16in alloy wheel that was corroded and all 4 tyres.

I found that if I changed down to 15in wheels and tyres (going from 205/55 R16 to 195/65 R15), the alloys were almost half the price, and thus I could change all 4, plus the tyres were about 25% cheaper for the same brand and model (Michelin CC+ in this case). In the end, I paid about £115 more in total but got 3 more brand new alloy wheels into the bargain (each cost about £82).

The ride quality improved quite a bit as a result, some due to the new tyres, and I suspect quite a bit due to the extra air cushioning effect of the higher sidewall tyres. I've noticed that despite my car being 16 years old, I've actually needed hardly any replacement suspension parts since I changed to higher sidewall tyres 4 years ago - taking into account variations in mileage.

Old tyres will inevitably get hard, although many makes (including Michelin) are saying they are designed to last longer than they used to, especially for the lower than average mileage driver (which suits me nicely), some up to 10 years old.

Normally you can tell if a set has gone hard as they will be quite noisy and give a harsher ride, plus they will likely be far less good in the wet, even if they have a reasonable amount of tread on them.

The 'ageing' process is apparently significantly accelerated if the vehicle is left in the sun a lot, and to a lesser extent changeable temperature conditions. It's why high value cars that are rarely used are stored in special air conditioned warehouses to control temperature and humidity and keep them out of the sun.

Newer designed and/or upmarket make tyres will also withstand such degridation better than a cheapo set of tyres.

In your case, it could be that some suspension parts might need changing (my car has done 'only' 70,000 miles and on the original springs and dampers but has had some suspension arms and bushes changed over the 16 years of its life) due to age and especially wear and tear, and/or the tyres could be on their way out via age.

* I personally would not use tyres over 10 years old, even if the car had been inside most of the time. That used to be 6 years old until I got my latest set. I would always go on condition and how they feel in use first, whatever their age or tread depth (though I would probably replace them at around 3mm tread left rather than let them go down to 2mm or the absolute legal limit).

It might be useful for you to let us know what size and make/model of tyres yours are, plus the tread depth left across all 4. If your front tyres are more worn than the rears (which normally get much less of a beating), it might be prudent swap the fronts over to the rears first to see if the front end ride quality improves

I'm not sure what everyone else thinks of that suggestion, but it might be a cheap way of seeing whether its the tyres or the suspension - or both.

If you opt for new tryes, go for the softest load rating available.

I bought some tyres for my Lexus CT200h with a 91W load rating and they were noticeably firmer than the 87Ws that I took off.