Piloti’s new PCH Touring Shoe

Piloti came out with a bunch of new shoes that look and fit great. We’d like to highlight one of them, the PCH Touring shoe.

The Offical Blurb from Piloti is as follows:

Inspired by the Pacific Coast Highway from Cambria to Monterey on the California coast, the PCH features a suede, leather and mesh low-cut upper. Our first adventures to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca took place along this amazing and challenging road, recognized by the hairpin corner stitching on the quarters of the upper. The patented Evolution bottom unit with its dual-density Roll Control™ heel cushioning gives a performance edge to this new classic Piloti Touring shoe taken directly from our history.

As you can tell they are very proud of this shoe’s namesake, the Pacific Coast Highway, and anyone that has been on this road knows why. No matter what you’re driving it is a blast - no matter how slow the person in front of you is going. I can remember driving it in a 93 Accord - a trusty steed but not what you’d wish to tackle serious geography with. Even still it was a great experience.

But my galavanting is not the issue here, these shoes are. Plain and simple, they’re great - available in a few different color combinations there’s sure to be one that suits your stylistic fancy. The shoe we’ve photographed is the Soy and Olive color combination.

What Makes Piloti’s a “Driving” shoe?

If you haven’t tried a pair of Piloti shoes, give them a shot - they are really a great comprimise between a full on driving boot and a normal walking shoe. The sole of the shoe is flat, so that when you’re driving you don’t have to deal with the annoyance of having the contact patch between your feet and the pedals change depending on where your foot is placed. It’s flat, yet has enough grip to keep you from losing it walking down a hallway in your office building.

Piloti makes a pretty big deal about what they call the “Roll Center Heel.” As far as we can tell, this essentially means that the heel of the shoes is designed to be comfortable in a driving position. Shoes like New Balance and Asics running shoes generally have very sharp angles at the heel of the shoe, so when you have your heel resting on the floor at the accellerator, there is a lot of pressure on the very edge of the shoe. The Piloti shoes feature a rolled heel that allows you to actuate the accellerator with full support from the shoe. It really does make a big difference. If you look at all the Racing Boots from Puma, Bell, Oakley, etc they all have the same design, a gradual rolled heel.

We have taken a picture of the toe of the shoe to give you a better idea of the shape. You can see how the laces are situated here, and to those of you that have been on a Skateboard, you can notice some very similar styling cues here. They look almost like a pair of Vans, or something of that sort.

“At The End Of The Day”

Seems like a very long winded review of these shoes, but they are really great - we hope this review helps you make a decision - buying shoes via the internet is always very difficult. Piloti seems to be right on with the sizing, and you do want your driving shoes to fit tightly and be as narrow as possible. So to that end, Good Luck!

Links:

The Piloti PCH Touring Shoe at our website

Piloti.com