[poolview]

2007 MDX -Michelin Grand Touring - car in family since new - 210,000 miles- got these at 200K miles - quietest in the 13 years of ownership. Never put 'cheap' tires at all- but every previous tire set got noisy almost immediately. I always do 4....worth every penny

 

[Jeff612916]

Same experience with Nankang tires. Currently having SP-9 on my 08 MDX. $94.91 from amazon is definitely a great deal. Drive smoothly and surprisingly quiet than I expected. The set I got was made in Taiwan so I believe the quality is not an issue. I would say it's a great choice of budget.

 

[teknocrat]

I wouldn't consider Hankook as off-brand given they are used for some really high-end cars. I had Hankook winter tires for 5 years and they performed really well, albeit being a little noisy (understandable given how huge the threads were), but extremely soft and providing very good control.

Agree, just that they are not as Famous or seemed reputed on forums as Michelin etc

 

[DaveW2]

I usually go by tire ratings by Consumer Reports. Based on this I recently got Nexen Winguard Sport 2 for winter. Rated as good or better than Michelin X Ice, and less $$. They are Korean.

It's hard to know what are mainstream, and it probably doesn't matter. For example, Uniroyal sounds mainstream, but they are usually near the bottom of the ratings.

Consumer Reports also wrote:
Our testing program showed no clear trend between track performance and country of origin. We did see that U.S.–sourced tires were far more common among the SUV and truck tire group we just finished testing, where 33 percent were born in the U.S.A. For contrast, just 19 percent of last year’s ultra-high-performance tires were made in American.

Simply put: The test results show that national bragging rights have no traction. Savvy consumers are best served choosing replacement tires based on our ratings, factoring in the predicted tread life and cost, rather than judge by a tire’s country of origin



Sent from my MAR-LX3A using Tapatalk

 

[morethanjake]

My experience with off-brand tires has been hit or miss and what that leads me to believe is that's the issue with off-brand tires. On my MDX when it was almost time to turn in at end of lease, I put off brand tires on since previous Conti's were at the wear bars and I didn't want to pay dealership tire prices. Turns out, we decided to keep the car and rode on those off-brands for some time. Weird tracking issues and vibration issues started to pop up and after chasing down issues that didn't exist, replacing the tires with my usual Continental preference resolved all vibration and steering wheel alignment issues. On other vehicles, I've had zero issues or worse issues such as bulging and premature wear. I've learned my lesson that off-brand will only ever be a temporary solution for me if I need to get back on the road but I will always go back to Continentals

 

[morfdq]

i tried off brand and damn near died. Passenger rear just exploded while driving on the highway. I now only install Michelin

 

[96firephoenix]

On my current family car (matrix), i put some riken tires (offbrand michelin) and I've already got an out of round tire that causes a lot of vibration on the interstate.

We've only put 16k on the car and about 1/3 of that was been on winter tires.

Meanwhile I've got Bridgestone potenzas for my CRZ that have been on 3 different sets of wheels and 60,000 miles before the tread was gone... Perfectly smooth on the interstate.