It is not so much the direction of tire I am worried about but the outside edge of the tire wearing out. On those new RE's, one side of the tire is supposed to always be the outside edge. So on my car, the outside edge wears very fast: I flip the outsides to the insides and I can get another 50% of life out of the tire. Those new RE's, if I have a tire shop flip them, I am now using an edge that was specifically designed to be on the inside as the outside. Performance will suffer.