You know when you've got that...
You know when you've got that offset just right: When the tire and fender meet up perfectly-not too much, not too little showing.
Offset and its effects
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. Production-based race cars like the CRX and Integra that run stickier tires and less positive offset, exhibit somewhat high-bearing loads. Thankfully, Honda wheel bearings are strong and few problems occur.
Improper wheel offsets can...
Improper wheel offsets can lead to a variety of problems ranging from poor handling characteristics to broken suspension components, like this Civic knuckle.
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.