Eighty dollars. That’s all I spent on each all-terrain tire I have wrapped around my 1991 Jeep Wrangler YJ’s 15-inch five-spokes. Typically, I think tires are one area where one should not ever “cheap out,” but I took a risk this time at my local neighborhood Walmart, and I’m glad I did. Here’s why.
Oh I’m going to get some flak for this one. Mention “cheap tires” in any car-enthusiast community and you can expect to get eviscerated. And I get it! Tires are the glue between a vehicle and the ground; without good ones, you can kiss acceleration, braking, handling, fuel economy, road noise, and all sorts of extremely important vehicle attributes goodbye. Tires are just too important to compromise.
My philosophy for the longest time has been to purchase junkyard tires. My view was that I’ve purchased many used vehicles without immediately replacing their tires, so used tires have been good to me. More importantly, junkyard prices meant I could get high-quality, brand-name rubber for less than a brand new cheap tire. “A quality-brand tire is more important than the tire being brand new,” I reasoned after checking the tread depth with a gauge, reading the manufacturer’s date on the sidewall, and inspecting the tire closely for defects.
This strategy has worked out great for me. I’ve had all sorts of fantastic Michelins and Firestones and Goodyears and Nexens and BFGs and all sorts of other quality brands on my vehicles — all from junkyards. It’s just one of the many ways working on my own vehicles and frequenting junkyards has let me drive vehicles with components that are much, much more expensive than I could ever afford new.
But my move to California has put what I hope is a temporary halt on my access to cheap, used junkyard tires, so a few years ago when I bought my 1991 Jeep Wrangler YJ, I headed to Wally World.
The Kumho Road Venture ATs that came on my Jeep were too large, and were rubbing on my rear fender flares. What’s more, they were old and dry-rotted. They had to go.
I wasn’t really up to spend a ton of money, but when my local junkyards and Facebook Marketplace came up short, I went to Walmart.com and filtered for all-terrain tires under $90. These are the two I got, with the very cheapest tire being one called a Dextero All Terrain DAT1:
Only $80!
To put that into context, the average 235 75R15 all-terrain tire probably costs about $130, with the cheapest name-brand being the Goodyear Trailrunner A/T at $105 a pop at my local Discount Tire-equivalent. Multiply that $25 delta by four and the Dexteros save you $100 even over those cheap Goodyears.
Image: Walmart
“But who the heck even is Dextero?” you might wonder. Well, according to the brand description on Walmart’s website, the tires are actually made in the good ol’ US of A!:
The DEXTERO ALL TERRAIN DAT1 is an AT tire designed to deliver excellent performance on or off the road. The tread is designed for superior grip on wet or dry roads and offers great self-cleaning for off-road traction. The rugged tread compound features long tread life and improved cut/chip resistance. Five-Pitch pattern technology reduces road noise for a quiet and comfortable ride. The DEXTERO ALL TERRAIN DAT1 is a fantastic choice for your SUV or Pickup Truck, with most sizes proudly made in the USA.
The brand itself isn’t American, though. It’s actually part of Singapore-based Giti Tire Group, which operates eight tire manufacturing facilities, with one having opened in South Carolina back in 2017. Still, the fact that these tires are made in the U.S. makes me feel less uneasy about buying them this cheap, and any remaining unease disappeared once I installed them on my YJ. These tires are surprisingly decent both on dry pavement and off-road.
On pavement, the tires are fine. I’ve really only driven it on dry roads, so your mileage may very in the wet (admittedly, Southern California roads represent the easiest testing-ground for a set of tires, as there’s rarely any moisture, so perhaps my expectations for these tires were too low). Tire noise is good, ride quality/comfort is good enough to where I don’t notice it on my already-bumpy Jeep Wrangler YJ, grip is more than I need for my application, and fuel economy isn’t something I’m going to be able to test driving this old brick. Treadwear after 5,000 miles appears normal.
Off-road, the tires have great grip on dirt and rocks. I tend to air my tires down to 20 PSI when I’m off-road, and that made for good ride comfort to go along with the grip.
If there’s one complaint I have it’s that some of the lugs get damaged every time I go off-road. Here you can see some broken pieces and just general wear (of course, I’m sure if a more expensive tire would have fared much better.):
But for my use, these USA-made Dexteros have been fantastic and worth every penny of $80. At least on my old Jeep in Southern California conditions, I just don’t know that spending even another $25 per tire on nicer rubber would have netted me significant enough benefit — or at least not one I can prove with data. And that’s exactly where I like to operate: On the “knee” of the benefit-cost curve, right at the point where spending more cash yields diminishing returns.
I’m not the only one. The tires have over 3,700 reviews on Walmart.com, with an average rating of 4.5 stars. For the most part, based on my internet research, it seems these tires are considered a solid value.
P.S. For my wife’s car, I bought Michelin CrossClimate II’s at an outrageous $1000 a set. I will do this again when they wear out.
Cheap tires are ok as long as you do the research before buying. I had a sports car that I’d need to replace the tires due to age before they’d wear out, did research on Kenda KR20A, their reviews were good, and they were substantially cheaper than anything else. They ended up being pretty good tires.
Another way I save on tires is buying closeouts on Tire Rack, as long as the dates on the tires aren’t too old. You’ll get a name brand tire at a big discount.
Good tips!
Excellent tip, Thanks!!
Re: “Tires are the glue between a vehicle and the ground”
So close DT…
In the words of a wise (& possibly high) man…
“Your tires are the things on your car that make contact with the road”
I got that reference to Phish. I’m betting a burrito that DT didn’t get that one though.
Haha very true. My reply was for our intelligent reading audience.
Of course David could look that quote up & if he did he would be treated to a most excellent very chill song 🙂
I have a set of Milestars on my Solara convertible. So far, they have been very good. It is a 3-season car, so no idea of snow performance. I wasn’t anxious to spend a lot on tires that will age out before they wear out. With 2-3K driven per year, that is likely to happen for this set of tires.
This – use case matters. I drive a lot of highway in all seasons but don’t autocross. I have one AWD suv in the stable for when the weather gets really bad, I also work remote so…
I have Milestars on my Chevy, they’re one of the increasingly few options for 13 inch tires left, unless you count trailer tires. The ones they replaced had a 2012 date code and were getting rock hard, so I’m sure anything would have felt like an upgrade, but I have no complaints at all. And, much like modern motor oils, I just kind of assume that the cheapest modern car tires are still going to perform better than the average ones of 50-60 years ago
A highly informed connoisseur walks in and sees the price. I’ll take DAT1
GOLD.
I was going to use DAT1 as my witty remark, but yours is better, and also sooner. Bravo.
It’s easier to go cheap on tires when you have a very narrow use case, a Jeep that’s not daily driven but mostly used off-road in SoCal helps create those conditions for sure. The more variety of conditions and uses you are going to put a tire through then the more you are going to want the premium brands that can push the edges of what’s possible when balancing out the various competing aspects of tire design/performance.
Tire prices are getting out of control, idk if it’s tariffs or what, but I bought 4 brand new 235/75/15 General Grabber ATXs for about $550 in 2019. That was six years ago.
I went to replace them, and those SAME TIRES are now almost $800! In less than 6 years, they’ve gone up almost $300 for the exact same things!
I rolled the dice on a set of Laufenn X Fit ATs for $600, with a $50 rebate card, so $550. Then I sold my old tires for $200, so total cost was $350 for 4 new all terrains. Not bad.
And so far they are great tires! Apparently made by Hankook…
Curious bc I’ve never sold my old tires… did you sell them on ebay autos or maybe in an enthusiast website?
I’ve sold a set on CL. They didn’t last long.
FB marketplace
The Ranger I bought had those Laufenn tires on it. My immediate thought was “shit, these have a lot of life left on them before I can replace them with something decent”. But sure enough the Tire Rack rating on them was pretty good and after a re-balance they seem pretty good!
I just dropped over a grand at Costco for a new set of Michelin cross climates, 265/60/18. This is what it is now.
Cross climates are so good though. Highly worth it.
That’s my hope. They weren’t even my original choice as the Defender LTXs were out of stock at the time.
Why are you running 18s for snow tires? You need more sidewall bruv
Snow tires? Cross Climate2s are all-seasons. Costco only installs OEM sizes.
Put a set of those on my wife’s Palisade last year. They were excellent in the winter snow here in New Hampshire, and just as good the rest of the year. Worth every penny
Pep Boys store brand tires are pretty good. They’re rebranded Coopers, which aren’t bad. Both of those statements are based on my tenure there in the 90’s.
Nowadays I buy something good on TireRack, and then take them to a local used tire shop for mount and balance for like $15 each.
On my dailies I have been very happy with Sumitomo tires.
A few years ago I went in for Sumitomos and let the tech talk me into some Kelly tires instead. Seeing as Kelly is owned by Goodyear, I figured why not. They sucked. Loud, terrible grip in even damp conditions.
Finally replaced them last year with the Sumitomos I wanted and they are so much better. I definitely recommend Sumitomo.
I agree,I bought a set of Kelly tires for a beater once after the salesman talked me into it and they were terrible.
I have Kelly tires on one of my cars right now and they kind of suck when it gets wet. Granted they are all seasons, not proper winter tires, and car does have a pretty sensitive throttle but the rear tires were sliding through most turns I made in the winter. Have to cut throttle multiple times through a turn, never had to do prior, though it could be the car’s sensitive gas pedal. The Toyos on my other car are great and consistent no matter what weather and the General Altimaxes on my last car were decent. Any snow issues with the Altimaxes were mainly down to ground clearance than tire grip it seemed.
I had the opposite experience: I had to replace the disappointingly harsh-riding Toyos that were the upgrade tires on my car, and the shop recommended Kellys as a lower-cost alternative that use Goodyear rubber. They’ve been just fine. Decent grip, and a far better ride than the Toyos. This is a midsize CUV, I ain’t autocrossing this thing, I want comfort!
Sumitomo is the 5th largest tyre manufacturer in the world. They also own the Dunlop, Falken, and Ohtsu brands and predominantly produce under the first two.
The Sumitomo Group as a whole is one of the largest (and oldest) companies in the world.
Source: Ex Sumitomo Rubber employee.
I’m running a set on the Mustang right now. No complaints, other than I don’t get to drive it much since I was nice to my 16 year old and let him have it as a school car (at least until winter).
Not a name-brand but seem quality. Good winter traction and acceptable wear. TBH I avoid a lot of the big tire names. Best set of tires I ever owned were the Toyos on my old SHO.
Sumitomo tires and they gotta be runflats.
Can confirm on the Dexteros.
A few months back, my stepson needed fresh (i.e., not scary, hard as a rock) tires on his old Econoline Club Wagon (with full-on late-70s LTD-style Chateau trim inside, a manual gearbox and a 351–how does he keep finding these cool things?!?).
Anyway, with a kiddo of his own on the way, he was looking at worn, weather-checked tires for said Econo on Facebook. When he showed me what he was about to buy, I stopped him, checked the Wally site, and found the Dexteros in the same size for around $300 and on hand at the local store. So, I picked up the set of tires, brought them home that evening and had some good bonding time with him, as I have a proper tire machine and a hand-spin balancer in the garage at home (and yes, it still fits two cars). I’m kinda’ surprised you don’t have easy access to a tire machine, David. If you can find a good used one, they’re game-changing.
Tires were excellent for the price and have been doing well since.
Getting decent tire-changing equipment for my house has been a dream for a long time – the joke was when we went to the tire store – what would they fuck up, not if they would fuck up. My Elise has so far vetoed my dream, but I did have the electricians put a 240V, 40A circuit in the garage when they were here doing some other work. For the time being I have been using a local store that has yet to fuck anything up after three or four trips.
The worst recent tire experience was the imbalance where I brought it back to the store where they installed the tires, had them rebalance, and still had to stop at another store in the chain on my way home because after two tries the tires were still unbalanced. Somewhat surprisingly the cannabis breath second store did a good job.
I’ve seen YouTubers do amazing things with modded HF/similar manual tire changers. I experimented with manual last year and wasn’t pleased. I’ve found that the bead breaking functions of those are the weakest link, but if bolted to the floor, a modded manual should work well enough.
Lacking 240V to the garage (it’d open cans of worms in the needed updates department) helped drive my decisions. I was able to find an fully air-powered tire machine (late-90s vintage Hoffman rim clamp, bought crazy cheap, needing minor work). Trailered it three hours’ home and have gotten it dialed in through the spring and summer. Actually helped a buddy swap two tires off/on rims this morning–got the dismount/mount all done in 20 minutes.
My 25-gallon tank/compressor is juuuust enough to have it function well enough, as the tire machine is happiest with a consistent 100-110 psi supply. Most mounting machines use a combination of 120v and air to function. Mine has a air-powered motor for the turntable instead of an electric motor, which is the usual mode for most rim-clamp machines.
The balancing situation here still isn’t ideal, but still better than a bubble/static balancer (which I did try, but wasn’t satisfied). I’m currently using an ancient Snap-on hand-spin balancer. Not perfect, but it’s lightweight and relatively portable. Where 240v would be nice is to power a full-size balancer…. Still, with careful shopping and being willing to travel and fix stuff, one should be able to get completely set up for under $500. It’s already paid for itself, as getting a set of tires mounted and balanced locally has already crept past $125/set, and I have five cars here, plus full sets of winter tires for three of them.
Good to know. I’m ashamed to admit I just patched a hole in Project Subi’s ancient, dry-rotted, right rear tire with a gummy patch just so it wouldn’t look like I was neglecting the car. Brandon pointed out to me that Wal-mart had cheap 14-inch tires for the Yugo, so I will probably cave and get them for the Subi.
After I grind the rust off the wheels and paint them white again, of course.
Don’t be ashamed to fix a tyre, every additional day you keep an old set of tyres on keeps them out of the landfill.
Every time I read the word Dextero…. My mind says, “Canyonero!!!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQepHGxrifs
I keep wanting to add “The Great” after the name.
I stick to name brand stuff for tires, but Walmart does have some great deals on tires occasionally. I got some Cooper Evolution HT2’s for my Ram for cheap on a Black Friday deal last year. My Ram has stupid 22″ rims (it was a Covid truck purchase and there wasn’t much choice), so it takes 285-45R22. Walmart had them for $155 each plus $28 each for install and warranty. $732 plus tax out the door for 4 22″ name brand tires is crazy cheap. They have been great tires so far. Far quieter and better wearing than the OEM Goodyears. I’ve been solidly a Discount Tire guy for many years, but now I at least look at Walmart if they are running really good deals.
And my store that I work at has has only recently started carrying your size, and so far im the only tech in my shop brave enough to mount them.
They are some big tires. I would have much preferred the 20″ rims and the additional sidewall.
And your choices with the 20”s go from one tire to at least five (two Coopers in a street tread and an All Terrain tread, two Dextero in a street tread and an all terrain tread, and a Goodyear in an all terrain tread.)
Coopers are a mixed bag in my experience. I’m running a set one the Camry now as the Sumitomo were unavailable, so we will see. Coopers seem to wear fast.
Hopefully they last longer than the OEM Goodyears. Those only made it about 27,000 miles before they were done. The Coopers have a 60,000 mile warranty, but I tend to age out my tires before mileage gets them. Not at 27,000 miles though. I do tow about 20-25% of my miles on the truck though, and I know that takes a toll. So far, I’m noticing little to no wear after about 10,000 miles.
I did not like the Coopers I had on my Mazda. Not only did they wear much faster than expected they got loud after a year. The Continentals that replaced them have been MUCH better.
The bigass wheels and tires are flipping heavy! I found on of our work trucks up on jack stands, I think it had 20″ wheels with 285/60R20 tires. I’ll gladly keep the little 15″ jobbies on my ’95 F150.
When it’s not a daily driver,the qualities of “round, black, holds air” are plenty good enough.
I’m pretty fortunate in that my DD uses the same tire size as the base Ford Maverick on steelies. FBM is chock full of almost brand new Maverick tires for around $200 for a full set.
As soon as I saw an article that pertains to tires that I install on a daily basis, I had to read it! (Fun little fact: you can tell if those Dexteros are made by the South Carolina plant if the DOT code on the tire starts with 01B!) and it makes me very happy that David is happy with his DAT1s! (It’s actually a pretty popular tire in my area, to where we can’t hardly keep his size 235/75R15 in stock!)
Hey, a WalmartTech! Welcome, and thanks for being here!
Glad to be here David! (Im actually the guy on Twitter/X that showed you that WK2 battery location!)
Thank you! What more can you tell us about these Dexteros?
How much weight did they need to balance?
Yes.
Multiple anvils.
Usually when I install tires at the store I work at anything over 5oz I dub “balanced like ass” and it also depends on the condition of the rim as well; if it’s got a nice bend in it from a pothole, no amount of spin or road force balancing is going to fix that.
I’m not sure you can fault lug damage when offroad, unless it’s on really mellow terrain. I’ve ripped large, 1″, chunks of lugs out of Mickey Thomson mud tires, which are not cheap. Last year, walking behind the car on elephant hill, the wife picked up a 3″ chunk of tire she thought I’d lost, but it was big enough to easily recognize as from a BFG all terrain. The expensive tires can certainly get torn up as well.
Fair point! I’ve added that note to the piece.
I expect a black band on the top of the site mentioning how one of the staff died in a flaming wreck caused by the blowout of a cheap tire-
You think that will happen before reading about how:
Torch tragically dissolved while chain sawing open a battery?
Adrian’s nefarious plan to rid himself of the Rodius literally blew up in his face?
Mercedes creative out-of-the-box mold removal techniques didn’t work out quite as planned?
Or how decades of rust finally caught up to our hero here?
Hmm perhaps this is like ‘life on mars’ where all the writers are actually in some sort of purgatory after dying in car related incidents
Yeah, but now you can’t walk around telling people you bought four new Kumhos…
Nice, I just did the same thing for my XJ…a set of Forceum mud terrains was just over $100/tire installed.
I have a set of Forceum MT-08+ tires on a 95 Tercel. Not a lot of selection in 13″ tires! They wear fairly quick on the street but reasonable for an MT tire. And they do great in rallycross!
Buying tires for me involves weeks of research, digging on forums and eventually reaching the end of the internet. I know I need help, it a problem, but at the end the glorious day finally comes when I get the best deal on the best tire I can find. Cheap Walmart tires seem to hold up just fine, I see lots of people running those and I don’t judge you too harshly 🙂 for going that route.
I, too, do loads of research before buying tires. For the YJ, which only goes out on sunny days and doesn’t drive a lot of miles anyway, expensive tires didn’t make a ton of sense.
I keep seeing this logic here, but I’m not convinced. If the low annual mileage second car weekend toy is built for performance, it should have performance tires. Off-road for jeeps and the like, or on road for sports cars, etc. if your weekend second car is a cruise machine, then ok go cheap.
I’d hate to get in a 911 and know the tires have mediocre grip. Or get in a 4×4 and think I could be getting better traction over rocks and mud.
I’ve been off-roading since I was a child, so I can say with confidence that given the types of off-roading here in LA, these tires are great.
For the type of desert off roading that you are most likely to do in California it probably doesn’t matter too much. Puncture resistance is the must have and that is hard to quantify from the outside, they look OK enough.
Unless he goes rock crawling.
Last time I bought tires it also took weeks of research and I even made my own comparison spreadsheet. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSUY3f0o9Xb1pMhPwbPqmZ_Gjjx-rwWZcd252cdScd4SoPiYgB-6gxHCgO8OFYiOChIh1EhyTi2OyJQ/pubhtml?gid=0&single=true
you are not alone.
this is how I used to buy tires.. now I’ve given up, a quick read of Consumer Reports, TireRack reviews, and whatever’s on sale at Costco is usually good enough 😉
I’ve been using Costco for tires for the past +10 years now.
Like Costco does with other product categories they do well in narrowing down the options so that it appears you are selecting from a well qualified list of name brand roducts which usually comes down to a few options from Michelin and Goodyear for your make/model/tiresize.
And because of their huge buying power you can find really decent value for money vs. to TiresPlus or other tires chain store options.
I’m a compulsive research nut when it comes to any sort of major purchase. It was simultaneously liberating and maddening when I bought my Miata in the Covid shortage days in 2020 and there were so few 195/50r15 options available for the 15″ BBS wheels on the M Edition. I wound up with Kumho Ecsta PS31’s pretty much by default. They’re actually really good, and definitely better than dry-rotted Falken Ziexes.
Sure, for southern CA they’re probably fine, you have other vehicles to drive when the weather isn’t great, and it’s generally pretty great. But if you live somewhere mountainous or very rainy, I’d wager these perform pretty poorly compared to the bigger brands A/T tires. Cheap tires always have compromises built in, whether its a cheaper/less durable/capable compound, less advanced tread design or something else, there is ALWAYS a trade off. Great if these work for an isolated use, but as will most of DT’s automotive decisions, it’s not great advice for the general consumer.
There’s no such thing as ‘cheap tires’. All tires pass the required DOT tests for legal use upon highways in the US. And just because you don’t recognize the name brand doesn’t mean it’s cheap. That tire is likely (more than likely) made side by side with name brands you do know, in a country with really cheap labor costs, in a factory owned by the known brand. Just-like-every-other-product you’ve purchased a thousand times in your life.
That’s really not a fair argument. It’s the same as saying “all cars in the US comply with FMVSS, so there are no bad cars” as with all things, the regulations are a minimum. Meeting a minimum spec does not mean that all tires are created equally. Furthermore, same production line does not mean same tire, or spec, or compound, simply same manufacturing line. These are “cheap tires” because they are literally cheaper than the average for their size, and not all cheap tires are crap, but like I said above, there is something that is missing in one way or another for them to be cheaper.
Sometimes it’s missing the brand name, or certain compounds in the rubber, or engineering time into the tire’s carcass, tread pattern, etc, sometimes it’s manufacturing cost, but it’s always something. Some are better values than others, but there is no free lunch when it comes to tires. .
It goes the other way too, plenty of instances where the name alone makes it cost more and the quality is dubious relative to the extra cost. Not all expensive tires are good, and whatever it may be better at may not be something that’s at all necessary, an individual’s use case matters tremendously. Then again it’s their money to save or spend as they see fit. However I’ve yet to see anyone check to see exactly what tires are on my car before getting into my car when they want or need a ride from me.
I don’t know about “cheap” but $80 is pretty economical and it says right in the article that they’re made in South Carolina.
And I can confirm that the tires David bought are in fact made in South Carolina (checked the stock at the store I work at)
As someone who is working in the tire industry, I can say with 100% confidence that yes, there IS such a thing as cheap tires. The DOT requirements for a tire are basically stating that the tire will stand up to the numbers and letters molded in the sidewall.
You can definitely make a tire cheaper (read: lower quality) by choosing 2nd rate raw materials. The company I work for has several lower end subsidiary tire brands, and they are cheaper for this exact reason. Labor costs are spread out globally, and plants can only make so many tires.
You can’t make more tires at a plant because labor is cheaper.
Look into the ‘tier’ system and try to only buy 1st and 2nd tier products. Brands like Dextero, Lexani, Milestar, etc. are all 3rd and 4th tier products, made with 3rd world labor and substandard materials. Typicall ‘cheaping out’ includes substandard grades of carbon black and they are typically short on compound softeners and anti-oxidants. While they may last 80k, it’s hard as a rock and has limited grip and terrible wet weather performance.
Because of the manufacturing process of a tire, you can only make one size of one type of a tire at a time, and switching over to a different size/model is a planned event. As such, a plant that is manufacturing entry-level products ONLY does that level of tire.
HOWEVER – Cheap off-brand tires have a very distinct place on the market. David’s Jeep (running 15″ wheels) is an uncommon diameter in 2025. Third tier tire manufacturers gleefully occupy this part of the market, as the big tire makers don’t play below 16″ much at all anymore. People with 30 year old non-performance cars aren’t looking at Michelins PS2s.
Yeah, it’s getting really challenging to buy a decent tire for MG’s and such with 14″ rims.
Yeah, it seems that every year, there’s less and less choice for anything under a 16” rim, at my store we are literally down to just one size for a 14” rim, everything else is either 15” or bigger (we have actually started carrying a 22” size just last year.)
Thank you for this post. Excellent.
You may be right in the general sense of no-name imported tires, but if you read the article, the tires David bought are manufactured in South Carolina and seem to have consistently high owner satisfaction. Sometimes a good deal is just a good deal.
We’re watching a shift in manufacturing happen right in front of our eyes. The South Carolina Giti plant that manufactured these tires was built in ~2018 or so and produces tires that the American market demands. It’s a tariff avoidance tactic, and very high tariffs have been present on Chinese-made tires for a very long time. It’s not just a Trump thing.
So these ‘Chinese’ tires, made in SC avoid that tariff entirely. At best, the imported raw materials going into the tire are bearing the brunt of the tariff impact.
But what you need to consider is to compare apples to apples, i.e. US-produced Dextero A/T tire to a US-produced General A/T tire and ask, WHY is the Dextero so much cheaper?? The answer comes down to using lower-grade raw materials in the product, and less marketing.
I was never debating ‘good deal’ vs. ‘not a good deal’. That’s up to the purchaser.
Related point, the major tire factories around the world all use similar equipment to manufacture their tires – major brands in China, Taiwan, Germany, US… the gap between each of the brands gets narrower and narrower.
What does, however, fight against that it the perennial drive to make it “cheap” by compromising functional elements. Part of what makes premium look good, is cheap stuff looking bad.
Honestly, however, I see that cheapification more out of established brands than new entrants.
I think the amount you spend on tires should be tied to how you use them. My wife’s vehicle is the one we take trips in. It’s the nice one. It’s the one I’m behind the wheel of for hours on end on these long road trips. If I had a tire that was making any noise whatsoever it would drive me insane. That’s whey the wife’s car gets Michelin’s. My 96 bronco on the other hand carries me to work every day and on errands. It never goes more than an hour from the house. It has a set of Atturo’s that were on it when I purchased the truck. They are extremely loud. I don’t really care though because I can just turn the stereo up louder and most of the drives are less than 10 minutes anyway. It will probably get another set of cheap something or other when these wear out.
Great tires…. built to meet Walmarts HIGH standards.. nothing can go wrong here
Yeah, deservedly so I think.
I’d have sympathy for someone who really would struggle to afford better, but having no better justification than being a cheapskate is a very bad way to think about buying tires.
If you can’t tell where they saved the money up front (or over the first 5,000 miles), you’re not going to like finding out where it was saved later on.
That very much depends on the use case. For a car that sees little use and the tires will likely dry rot out long before they wear out cheap tires may be the best option.
That said on my own DD even I.on the best tires I can find, regardless of price. Cheap tires tend to be poor value.
For my Merc it was definitely ride quality and wear that are the compromise. But I put at most 3k miles a year on the car and for $480 in Canadian Loonies installed, I couldn’t say no.
If I decide to keep the car, next summer will see some proper tires on it. But they’ve done me well the past 3 summers.
Yep, I’m a frugal dude but tires are one area where I won’t cheap out.
I’ll defend David here. He did a little research and he doesn’t drive the vehicle all that much. They will probably get scrapped due to age and rot long before they wear out. Offroading can damage an expensive tire just as quickly as a cheap one.
If this were his daily it’d be a different story but for this use case I can’t fault him for going cheaper.
Coming from a background working in a tire shop for years, I second this. Though what really makes me cringe is mounting used tires, no matter how good they look. Sure with a large number of cars it would certainly save on costs, but I would never take that risk with any of my cars. On brands, I’ve gone lower end on beater cars, but not on the daily divers.
In my experience with cheap street tires they are not loud for a while, then get loud. Let us know how they are after some more wear.
Usually they will be the loudest when they are worn down to the wear bars.
These were far from that. They got noisy within the first year.
They get even louder when the metal wires start poking out and hitting your fenders as you drive.