Do you have info / reference as to the color and tonal qualities of these different rubber formulations?
I have seen a fair number of German road wheels, track blocks and hard rubber gun wheels while volunteering at the Patton Museum and never noticed a difference in the quality or color of the rubber.
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I was being more than a little facetious and tongue-in-cheek! Being pretentious about “exact”, and “perfect” colors! 
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I caught the sarcasm, had a good chuckle.
I know asking “what is the best color for x” is silly especially for WW2 or Soviet Cold War items, or for things that change color as they wear like tires. I mainly asked this question because previously I would lighten black with white but this came out much colder gray than rubber. Adding the brown as suggested above brought some warmth back and made a nice worn black color
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I thought I sensed the sarcasm but decided to play it straight. 
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The colour I use depends on the effect I want and the vehicle/wheel colour I want to contrast it with. XF63 German Grey works well for faded, dusty tyres. XF69 NATO Black works for newer tyres, as does XF85 Rubber Black.
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xf63 or tyre black of gunze mr.hobby
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My favorites are:
Aeromaster Tire Black
Gunze/Mr.Hobby Tyre Black
Tamiya XF85 Rubber Black
The gunmetal is neat idea…!
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Thanks Kraft
_
IMHO ~ I often find “Tire Black” colors to be too Black and then sometimes the colors marked “Rubber” will be too Brown and I end up using those for “Leather”.
More Gun Metal for Tire Black Images:
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These are all either molded plastic or solid resin tires that have been sprayed OD and then gone over with the Gun Metal. What ever base color you use has to be uniform as the thin Gun Metal paint will not cover over a color change.
p.s. Don’t be afraid to leave the mold lines on the Sherman road wheels as just about all real Sherman road wheels had that mold line in exactly the same place. - well maybe knock it down a little but only extremely worn Sherman tires had lost this feature.
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Go and put on a new set of tyres and note their colour. Then have a look at them just a few days later.
So unless you are building a diorama depicting new vehicles coming out of the factory all tyres will be weathered to some extent. So considering the various regions vehicles with tyres were/are deployed then the shades of weathering will vary. Weather will be a result of the environment they are subjected to.
So my answer is there is no answer. Me? I use black and then dust them with an appropriate shade of makeup.
bruce
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I wonder how long until AK interactive will come out with a 3 pk of black rubber colors now. Haha
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Ref @Mead93 original post … It seems all of the above work … 
Lots of scope for experimenting to find what you feel happiest with. I for one will now be trying the Gun metal approach which @165thspc mentioned and the XF63 that @JohnTapsell mentioned as well as my normal XF 85. All good info guys 
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The future is now.
Even a book to help.
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Thats going to be another Xmas pressie link to SWMBO…
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I always pay the extra for the Armor-All tire treatment at the car wash, knowing full well it won’t last long!
I’ve always been pretty pleased with how NATO Black looks. Plus when I do my standard weathering with my dirty brush cleaning water, it looks fine to me.
As mentioned it’s so subjective, so whatever you’re happy with is good enough.
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As a former tire store manager I’d give you one piece of advice. Either do the tire shine consistently or don’t, sporadic treatments will actually speed up sidewall deterioration. If it’s not reapplied the effect is to dry out the rubber speeding up dry rot. Sounds counter intuitive to approach it as all or nothing but Thousands of tires made me a believer.
For “scale black” straight black always seems to look fake; starting with something lighter makes sense. I often use Tamiya NATO Black which is a “lighter black” with just a touch of green in it.
I also agree about the adding brown - it makes even scale black rubber seem more used and convincing.
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Those colors look pretty good, I might have to pick up nato black at some point! For now adding the brown did the trick. Gave them a greyish look without being straight gray
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