Tires are the only part of your car touching the road, and even then the surface area regularly connecting to the pavement could fit on a piece of printer paper. And, yet, many of us just look for the cheapest tire. For certain cars that’s maybe ok, but even our staff is split between people who don’t care that much about their tires and those who spend way too much time tire-shopping.
Matt Hardigree
The tires are the only part of my Subaru that do not let me down. I have Michelin CrossClimate 2s and I think they’re the best all-around tire for people who drive a non-performance vehicle/live in cold climates and might have to drive in snow irregularly.
Thomas Hundal
When I bought my Boxster, I knew it needed new tires, and there aren’t many choices in this particular fitment. Instead of the Porsche N-Spec Pirelli P Zeros, which I haven’t been impressed with, or the ancient and expensive Porsche N-Spec Michelin PS2s, I went with the Continental ExtremeContact Sport 02. It’s a 340-treadwear summer tire competing with the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S, except it’s exclusively an aftermarket fitment. While grip and resistance to flat-spotting has been excellent, the big surprise was road manners. These are incredibly quiet tires that are still sticky enough to throw pebbles, they’re hushed over expansion joints, have a great sense of dead-ahead, and I find the steering more linear than on most Michelin tires. So far, I’m extremely happy. After all, a good car requires good tires, right?
Peter Vieira
I am a discerning consumer, which means I wear out the counter guy at my Local Firestone Tire Center with a litany of questions including “What do you have for a 2015 RAV4” and “What is the cheapest tire for a 2015 RAV4,” followed by “can I keep this pen” and exactly no other questions. I’m an unashamed cheap-tire buyer, but I won’t get the cheapest of the cheap – it’s gotta be a legit name brand, it can’t be something like, “Mile King, a Division of Abakumov Rubber & Sausage.” At present, I’m happy with my [goes out to garage to check] Firestone All-Seasons. They’re the perfect combination of “was on sale” and “seems fine” that I require in a tire. And if anyone’s wondering why I get my tires from a Firestone shop, it’s because it’s close enough for me to ride my bicycle back home after I drop off the RAV4. I can’t be hanging out in no tire store all day, I’m busy.
Mercedes Streeter
My only tire loyalty is to Vredestein. Otherwise, cheapest tire from a recognizable brand.
Top image by Pete, via Twitter (sigh … “X.”)
The only part of my car touching the road? The disrespect towards my muffler is real.
Bought a used G70 3.3T last year. The owner put on some cheap Big O Alpine all-season tire. They suck. Really squirmy, poor grip and braking. They’re pretty quiet and did fine in the winter, I’ll give ’em that. In the near future it’ll be some proper Continental or Michelins!
When I was five lug swapping my Vigor I put a set of Yokohama’s Advan Sport A/S+ on. Fantastic tire, took it into the snow a couple times and seemed to do decent for it mostly summer focused tire. Otherwise when it’s dry or wet It’s got more than enough grip for my Acura. Price was pretty decent too, $135 for each and America’s tire had a huge discount going on because it was almost New Year’s. I’m extremely happy with my yokohamas, I would recommend them
Oh and thanks for the review of the Conti Ex Sport 02 Thomas, that’s what I’m planning on putting on the BrZ soon as I can kill the oem tires! It’s good to hear they are still civil in daily service!
BF Goodrich KO2s on the Jeep Comanche, I love them (white letters out of course)
Michelin Energy Stars on the Honda Civic Si, they are awesome on fuel economy, lack in grip.
Falken RT660s in the BMW E36 M3, they rock at autocross, lack direction change feel.
Verdestine tires on the Austin Healey Sprite, they ride very smooth and have better grip than the Achilles tires I used to run on it.
My wife’s GL350 (275/55-19) got Michelin CrossClimate 2s at the last tire change. about 10k miles on them and theyre doing just…fine. We live in NC so inclement weather is not a thing. and her commute is all of 3 miles
My X5 (315/35-20, 275/40-20) had Michelin Latitude Tourings (255/55-18) that lasted me 70k then i happened upon a set of 20s with Continental Extreme Contact Sports on them and those were an absolute HOOT compared to the Michelins. Those wore out in under a year (expectedly so) and then i happened upon ANOTHER set of the SAME 20s with Continental DWS06s. Definitely a preferred tired among my workplace (Lexus ISF, C5 Corvette, C6 Corvette) but i absolute love them. i’ve got about 10k on this set so far and have no complaints.
When i go to a square 20×11 set up, i will be sticking with square 315/35s in a DWS06+
The RE-71Rs on the Lancer are an absolute riot. Good in the rain, sticky EVERYWHERE. If you work from home, don’t drive in ice and like to hoon around in funny-shaped circles, I highly recommend those. Mine are past due for replacement, though.
The 411 just got a set of Michelin XZXs. I’ve only ever had Thunderers? on it, and these are a bit wider and nubbier while still fitting in the 411’s little vintage fenders. I like them so far! They’re way, way, way grippier than the last tires, but that’s not saying much. I may need to re-align the car (after fixing its death wobble) because it seems more understeery than it used to be. Is this what actual grip does on a vintage VW? Weird.
The 944’s had various generations of the Dunlop Star Specs for most of its life. They’re great. Good in the rain, which is great since it frequently rains when we race in Houston. Decent life on a ~2650?-lb car. Solid grip in the dry. Great Lemons tire. I’m tempted to try the RE-71Rs here, too, but I want to torture test them a bit more on the Lancer first. I got them right as I lost my job on the Lancer and haven’t taken it to the track as much since then. 🙁 I’m fixing that this year, though.
Love the RE-71RS’s too! But If you are looking for a budget option for the 944 the Kuhmo Ecsta V730 will give you almost the same level of grip, ability to take a lot of hot laps, and save you a fist full of dollars. Happy tracking!
Highly recommend Pirelli Scorpions for SUVs/light trucks. I put some on my wife’s Highlander last year and they did wonders. The Falken Sinceras on my TSX, however, are rough-riding. They handle well, but it gets jarring on a longer trip!
I’ve a set of Pirelli Scorpion plus on my Armada and it’s good in dry and wet, but only okay in snow. I’ve been much more impressed with the Falken Wildpeaks we have on my wife’s Pilot.
If you search GT350 tires on Discount you have 2 options and both are Michelin so thats what I have, they are fine I guess other then being expensive and wearing out in 15k miles. On my Ram I have IronMan tires or some such generic crap the dealer put on them when it was on thier lot as a used truck they are new so i will keep them but they dont have great offroad or snow traction, I almost got stuck the weekend I bought it. Lesson learned though so I wont go crazy with it until I change the tires.
The Michelin Sport Cup 2’s are the production tire for the GT350’s. They are a very lightweight and grippy tire but have almost no rain grooves and a short lifespan. Switching to the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S will give you better wet weather performance and probably twice the miles.
I didn’t really have any loyalty (I did like Blacklion for a time, but they stopped selling them at my preferred tire shop). Then I married a Dutch women and noticed the Vredestrin tires practically everywhere. I never thought I would be able to put them on my car in the US, but thanks to Tire Rack, I and my wife’s cars have them. I’ll never go back.
All Michelin on my WRX; PS4S for the summer and X-Ice Snow for the winter. All the grip, all the time. Only thing I might change for next time is swapping the X-Ice for one of Michelin’s winter performance options since I don’t actually have to drive in proper snow THAT often.
I stick with Michelins because 1) they are sold at Costco and 2) they seem to be above average in general. Wanted some Cross Climate 2s last time I needed a set but they were out of stock everywhere.
I’ve ran Michelin Defenders are on my commuter cars for years and they are certainly good enough for commuting, “all-season” work, and they know how to rack up miles without wearing out.
My experience with Pirelli, Conti, Bridgestone, Uniroyal was that they wore out pretty quickly despite the tread rating.
Worst tire ever was a set of Firestones that were OEM on my Honda Civic back in the day. Holy hell, anything that wasn’t dry was white knuckle. Replaced the tires and it was like a different car.
My Camaro came with Pirelli P-Zero and for a while I had very few options for replacements so for the first 10 years of ownership I was stuck with the stock style tires.
Just within the past year I have been able to get Michelin PS4s put on and I haven’t been happier. I felt the P-Zero were too hard and got really greasy on the track, never really getting the grip I hoped for. That was made even more obvious when the one track day before the rear PS4S arrived and I drove with the P-Zeros on the rear. The front had perfect grip but the back never got the traction out of the corners (that combined with the stock open diff) made for a really underwhelming day out.
Now that I have a matched set installed I haven’t been back to the track, so I don’t have any comparison, and I have an LSD in my spare bedroom just waiting for me to install so that data point will also be invalid if I make a comparison, because I’ll probably get that put in before I go to the next track day.
On my other car, which I have had even longer than the Camaro had come with some cheap mismatched tires when I got it. In the early 2010’s I put on some Michelin PS-2 all season tires. At the time I thought those were fantastic- autocross, track and even in the snow my little Z4 could do it all.
However, because of the camber settings and heavy use on the track they wore down pretty quick and I replaced them with PS4s in 2019. After swapping to the PS4s and lighter rim and was even more impressed with the performance and ride quality.
That is why on both my cars I use the same brakes and tires, I’ve tried many different brands and compounds over the years and Michelin has been the most consistent and feels best for my style of driving. If only they didn’t cost so much!!!