Offset and its effects on components.
"Production cars are built with wheel offsets that minimize wheel-bearing load. In corners, excessive lateral tire loads add stress to wheel bearings. Altering offsets affect how much load each of the two wheel bearings see both in straight-line driving and during cornering.
Improper wheel offsets can lead to a variety of problems ranging from poor handling characteristics to broken suspension components
Even suspension knuckles aren't immune from offset changes. Longtime Honda racer Sam Rothschild has suffered two complete knuckle failures on his CRX. Of course, he runs +35 offset wheels with sticky Toyo 225/50-15 RA-1 tires and a stiff suspension. The added leverage created by this offset causes a much larger bending moment in the knuckle, which over time led to a fatigue fracture on two different knuckles, but this is for a highly stressed race car and is a rather unlikely scenario when concerning the typical Honda street car. Regardless though, offset does do more than just fill or not fill the fenders-it affects handling, steering, traction, even the service life of otherwise unbreakable suspension components like knuckle assemblies. That should be more than enough reason for you to rethink that sick, fat lip, rear-wheel-drive-looking offset next time you go shopping for new shoes."
