The Autopian, Where Even A Story About A Random Tire Is An Adventure: COTD

The awesome Stephen Walter Gossin wrote a story about going off-roading in vehicles equipped with Kumho Road Venture R/T tires. Much of Gossin’s review wasn’t even about the tire, but of the thrill of going on a press trip. One person didn’t like that, but H4llelujah counters:

No, that’s what’s different here.

Every company gives press releases. You can find those regurgitated everywhere.

Here? Even on something as mundane as the 30th new RT tire in the past 3 years, you get a STORY, man.

CatMan:

Fantastic write up! Glad you only briefly mentioned the “top-shelf booze”, wouldn’t want you to get banned from future press events by Big Tire like what RV did to Mercedes.

Also, H4llelujah gets a second nomination for this lovely insight:

One of the (VERY) few things I miss about owning a tire shop was the manufacturer ride & drives. While they were always, always fun, some were much more honest than others. One manufacturer introducing a UHP summer tire let us take laps in Mustangs on an autocross track, and the 3 cars were bone stock, allowing us to really feel the difference between the tires, and it was wild to truly feel the new ones hang on a little longer before giving in to understeer.

Others, though, they ranged from the sneaky (running through the mud in Jeeps, the competitor jeeps, while identical, did not have the anti-spin differential, leading to a much more difficult time) to the downright obvious (2 bmw 1 series shod with competitor tires, the host tires equipped on a debadged M series car: that fooled exactly nobody)

Regardless of my experiences, the use of both broncos and 2nd pickups shows they’re pretty proud of these, and I’d hope so: This “RT” class is the “half ton pickup” of the half ton pickup tire world right now. Selling like crazy, whether anyone needs them or not.

On the point made about your brother going for aesthetics, he’s not alone. In my experience, people buy tires based on a few reasons, and I’ll break down the not-at-all-scientific percentage that I saw for each reason:

50% “what’s the cheapest you have in stock?”
25% “what do you have in” (insert brand loyalty here)
24% “what’s the tread look like”
1% “what’s the best tire out now?”

This reality caused a number of frustrated discussions with my reps that just couldn’t understand why I wasn’t selling more of the hottest, newest (read-highest priced) tire.

Thomas wrote about how the parent brand of Fram filters has filed for bankruptcy. Spikedlemon:

Fire sale.

To be split, purchased up in bits, and consolidated with deep cuts to the workers and replaced with inferior product.

Jesse Lee:

Fram is already an inferior product though.

Spikedlemon:

There is no limits to “inferior”.

Rollin Hand:

“This is just an empty soup can with Fram written on it in Sharpie.”

Have a great evening, everyone!

Top graphic: Stephen Walter Gossin