Thanks for all of you who weighed in on this subject. The bottom line for me is that the 245/45-19 Plus 2 upgrade would be best (duh! It takes me a while sometimes...), especially since anything wider would probably not work on the 7" wide stock wheel. However, I will probably NOT go that route. Why mess with Mazda's engineering? I'm not going to pull .9 G's on the skidpad, right? Not with our very intrusive electronic nannies...

Messing with the aspect ratio would be almost like buying all those little aftermarket chromed trim bits to totally bastardize the super clean Kodo design language! No...

Thanks again guys.

Carl