A tyres a tyre...
Most people who fit budget tyres do so based on price, why spend £300 on a set of 4 premium tyres when you can spend £150 on a set of budget tyres? To anyone outside the tyre industry, a tyre can be just a black, round thing that holds your car of the road, but with premium brand manufacturers spending hundreds of millions of pounds each year on tyre research and development, budget and premium tyres have vastly different properties.What does it mean in the real world?
To highlight the issue, Continental recently invited us to MIRA to drive two identical Ford Focus vehicles wearing the same size tyres, with the same tread depth and the same tyre pressures. The only difference? One vehicle was fitted with the multiple award winning Continental Premium Contact 2, and the other a budget tyre called "Triangle CNNT GLS".
The wet handling area comprised of a windy track section which demonstrated how the tyres react to high speed direction change, emergency braking and how well balanced the vehicle is. A second test, driven around a constant radius circle designed to simulate a large British roundabout in typical British weather (rain!) allowed us to measure corning speeds and how the car reacted to steering inputs at the limit of grip.
The first test comprised of the Continental Premium Contact 2 on the handling circuit. As you would expect from a wet surface, the traction wasn't as high as it is in the dry, but the car felt like it had plenty of grip, reacting well to our steering and throttle inputs. During the emergence braking the car peaked at 0.82g, and peaked at a similar 0.77G laterally in the corners.
Next up, the constant radius circle, with the Contis providing an average "on the limit grip" speed of 35mph, but offering plenty of feedback as the limit was reached, and subsequently passed. Once passed the limit of grip, the tyres let you know with plenty of feedback and understeer, and while understeer is a dull handling quality, it is is also a very safe quality. Average G on the low grip circle, 0.32g.
"Immediately the difference was obvious. The car had much less grip, extremely vague steering and you had very little feedback as to whether the tyre was gripping or sliding."
The Budget Tyre
The Budget Tyre
Next up was the turn of the budget Triangle on the wet handling circuit. Immediately the difference was obvious. The car had much less grip, extremely vague steering and you had very little feedback as to whether the tyre was gripping or sliding. Power understeer, something barely noticed with the premium tyre was much more of an issue, with the grip disappearing quickly and taking a long time to regain control once the tyre started sliding. The constantly circle proved even more worrying, with the car seemingly switching between understeer and oversteer with very little steering feel or input. Peak Gs? A meer 0.61G under braking and just 0.55G laterally, some 30% less than the premium tyre.
We get a lot of questions asking whether budget tyres are worth the saving, and we can now say with certianty they are not. Its not just the lack of raw grip, it's how the car reacts at the limit, and how much control you have once past the limit. A well developed premium tyre has been tested in all situations, where a budget tyre is an unknown quantity.
Further Reading:
It's far more important to get the pressures correct than worry too much about brands.
All tyres perform different on different cars on different surfaces on different weather's.
but
they ALL perform crap if pressured and balanced badly..
You don't know what balancing is do you?
Which one. static or dynamic?
When I raced, it was mandatory that all vehicles use 1B tyres. I chose to use Toyo's because they were £50 per corner whereas the Dunlop's and Yokohama's were around £120 per corner. Everyone thought I was mad. 3 poles, 3 category wins and all of a sudden, our competitors were trying Toyo's. Thing is whereas our experience was excellent, our competitors found the tyres very disappointing. We could comfortably make the tyres last a number of sessions whereas our competitors couldn't make them last for more than a single session. What I learned throughout all of this is certain tyres work with certain vehicles. Depending on how your vehicle is set up will make a large difference to the longevity of the tyre, the grip it provides and the feedback you get from it. Recently on a customer's Merc C Class Estate advised he get his tracking and wheel balance set up for as it was, I found driving his vehicle at low speed dangerous. This customer followed my advice and his enthusiasm post set up was incredible. Regardless of budget and tyre that you chose to use on your vehicle my guidance is simple... ensure your vehicle is set up correctly (both in tracking and tyre balance as well as tyre pressure) whether your vehicle is a road car, track car, or race vehicle. For if your vehicle is not set up correctly, regardless of brand and budget you will not get the best from your tyres!
I hope this helpful
I felt compelled to write this, I would put any make tyres on my car over Continental anyday. I had a Saab aero convertible fitted with Contintal tyres which failed miserably. in fact they failed so bad I was disgusted and I will never buy Continental ever again.
Basically the steel cord came through the tyre wall all the way round the tyre when it was about 12 months old and had done around 12,000 miles. It appeared that the laminates had seperated for some strange reason. It frightened me as this was on the inside of the tyre so I couldnt see the condition as the car was low to the ground. So without crawling under the car with a torch you would never see the condition.
It was picked up by a mechanic when my car went for an MOT and even he was shocked at how bad it had fallen apart.
Utter rubbish tyre - over priced and simply not worth a fraction of what they charge for them. I have had hundreds of cheap brand tyres on my cars since I started driving over 20 years ago, and never ever has a tyre failed so badly so this test is utter garbage as I currently have Vredestein Ultrac Sessantas on my 3.0 Jaguar XF and they simply rock and are far better than the Dunlops the car came with.
I wonder how much Continental paid you for these comments.....
Sorry to hear you had such a poor performance for a premium brand tyre. I have been involved with the fitting of over a 1/4 of a million tyres over the years as an independent tyre retailer. We have the ability to test tyres for road force and tyre pull measurements with a Hunter GSP9700. The overwhelming evidence has been the budget tyres offer poorer performance in almost every aspect from my experience. Also I have done back to back testing at Mira with a verity of budget tyres and Goodyear/Michelin. It's when you do back to testing that you realise the difference between the quality of tyres. You mention that you have Vredestein on your car now and you are happy with these. Vredestein tyres are almost as expensive as a lot of the leading brand tyres and are in no way a comparison to a budget tyre. You are not comparing apples with apples. At the end of the day any product can fail and tyres lead a hard life. That said we fit less budget tyres than mid range and premium tyres and without doubt the budget tyres are the ones that are by far and away the most likely to give problems. I'm not paid by any tyre brand or manufacture so have no axe to grind on this matter but I will not fit budget tyres to my car/truck or my partners car and paid for the tyres on my daughters car so that she had something descent on it. And yes I paid for them my self.
All tyres are very different with all vehicles. Cheap tyres can be better suited to some cars than premium brands are. now that the stickers have arrived on tyres (like the white goods ones) it is an eye opener to see that really cheap brands are just as good as premium brands.
I have heard that when some of the cheap brands come in to the county the manufactures as the importers what they would like sticking on the label. Take the label with a pinch of salt.
Would love to see the results between the Conti Sport 2 and the Barum bravuris2
Barum Bravuris 2 looks very like a Conti Premium Contact 2 in design. I have used both on a Peugeot 406 2.2 HDi and BMW 528i SE. The drive is very similar to be fair. But the Barum didn't last anywhere near as well, and required re-balancing throughout safe useful (short) life. It's not necessarily false economy, but the B2's don't suit all drivers and driving styles. Reverting to Michelin/Conti/Pirelli was worthwhile.
I can't understand how anyone can be content with wearing budget tyres. The attitude of "unless the insurance company price me off the street unless I put decent tyres on" is in my opinion a very selfish way of looking at things.
I recently replaced the Goodyear Vector 4Seasons on my E39 BMW 530i with Kleber Quadraxers - both three peak mountain rated all weather tyres. The 4Seasons have been moved to my 530d. The difference is immeasurable.
I would go so far as to say that the Quadraxers are in fact dangerous. They aquaplane on anything other than surface dew. Their braking distance is worse than the worn summer budgets I had on before. They loose grip if you corner at anything other than very conservative speeds but they don't give any warning of when they will let go.
After drifting round three corners on the A-Roads of our southern counties I had to really really feather the throttle to avoid any risk to other road users and myself.
It's not just a matter of "not everyone needs the benefits of being able to corner faster in the wet that a premium tyre offers". It's a matter of the safety of every other road user you go anywhere near. If you can in good conscience wear a tyre than you know full well is likely to kill someone who steps in to the road without seeing you coming where a premium brand could very well have saved any injury to them then frankly you shouldn't be on the road.
I will never be cheaping out on tyres again. The most worrying thing is the fact that according to these "Tyre rating" charts, the Goodyears are rated as "C" and "E", and the Kllebers are rated "C" and "E". Informative much? Nop.
These ratings need to be provided by an independent regulatory body, not the manufacturers themselves, as as my experience clearly proves they are made up by the manufacturer and bear no relevance to the reality of the situation.
Nonsense. Sorry, but some of us cannot/will not pay £500+ for a set of tyres. It's daylight robbery. It sounds like those tyres are not compatible with your vehicle (which is a high power, rwd car, which is notorious for being bad in the wet and the snow).
Even if you're not a 'spirited' driver spending more cash on a decent set of tyres is important as sooner or later you'll be driving in the rain - completely unavoidable - and the grip at the limit, progressiveness if it breaks (all stuff covered in article) is certainly better on a decent tyre. Although honestly I've never fitted anything rubbish to cars I've owned so I suppose I've not personally undergone the acid test myself! But then I check tyre pressures once a month, ensure tread is always decent and rotate every 8,000 km's.
The last three things are the most important. Brand is not.
Oops that last one did not work.
http://youtu.be/a_j-2W2uZ8c
Premium VS Budget Tyres - Real World Performance
"asking whether budget tyres are worth the saving, and we can now say with certianty they are not"This is a nonsense statement - you tested ONE brand of tyre - there are many budget tyres available - some great and some not so great.
I am sure Continental went to great lengths to find a budget type that made their tyres look good. The test should have been done with at least 5 or 6 of the most popular budget tyres fitted to identical cars, and one car fitted with 'Conties'. The driver should not know what tyres are fitted to each car until after the test is complete, otherwise the test is a total farce.
I drive a mercedes s500 and i have michelins on mine i have recently put four on the car which previously had budget tyres on the difference in road noise alone is quite outstanding and the grip is astonishing especially braking in the wet.
i put michelins on my jag as well last year and the wear is nominal compared to my wifes qashqai which had event budget put on hers are nearly ready for replacement when i asked the question i was told the michelins will do many thousands of miles more than the budget and this has certainly proved the case. but i am so amazed at the difference in noise level i cant quite believe the difference
Glad you're getting on with them :)
Thanks Real world for helping illustrate my point. Of course there's a performance difference between budget tyres and premium/performance tyres. As with everything in life you get what you pay for. But it was not my intention to question the bleeding obvious. I simply raised the notion that the difference in quality and performance i.e. safety, durability, longevity etc may not necessarily be worth the extra cost. Always assuming that tyres brought into the UK currently meet our stringent health and safety crietria, and people use their common sense in where and from whom they purchase them, then even the cheapest budget tyre must be deemed fit for purpose. Notwithstanding the additional "creature comforts" one gets from performance/premium tyres, such as reduced road noise, enhanced cornering capability at high speed etc, then I would suggest the average motorist would be content with a good VFM product. It's slightly alarming that someone who works in the insurance industry should be so wide of the mark on this. If, as you seem to imply, budget tyres (cheap to use your analogy) are anything less than fit for purpose, then the insurance industry would be all over it like a rash. But that's not the case is it? At least not yet anyway but give it time! You're deluding yourself if you think insurance companies would check cars for tyre type. They would simply get us to declare that detail in our in our proposal and then re-iterate it in the Statement Of Facts supplied with our policy. Thereby putting the emphasis on us, the motorist that we have told the truth. I had a long career in Sales and Marketing and reading your rant made me smile. Your asinine perspective on this would make many a Marketing strategist happy, safe in the knowledge that as yet, they've not been rumbled!
With the tyre labelling being introduced as we speak, we wouldn't be surprised if at some point (perhaps in the distant future) tyre quality was an influence on insurance prices.
When comparing to an A tyre in wet grip, a F tyre takes another 18 metres to stop from 50mph. That means when the A tyre has stopped, the F tyre is still doing around 30mph, which is the difference between no crash, and a fairly major crash.
Tyre labelling will change a lot of things over the next few years, it will be interesting to see what.
Lol, if you believe this test you'll believe anything.
Responding to Finn53. What planet are you living on? I have used budget ( another word for cheap) tyres and i have used good tyres and there is a clear difference in performance. I am also in the insurance industry and your statement is absurd. Insurance companies base their premiums on a number of factors and checking each car they insure for tyre type is so unworkable its stupid. In the end you get the tyres you can afford at the same time understanding that you get what you pay for and cheap is as cheap does.
How is it "so unworkable its stupid" (sic) to ask drivers what tires they have on their car? They already ask me for the make, model, year, engine, VIN, miles driven, and other details which are far more difficult to get than my tire brand.
Exactly. I always use cheap tyres, drive 15K a year in Scotland (in the rain a lot!) and never had an issue.
I completely agree with Clanmac1. If the difference in quality and performance of tyres is so wide (cheapest budget tyre versus most expensive premium tyre), then how come insurance companies don't use this as a criteria for assessing our premiums? I suspect most insurance companies, given the chance, would introduce some form of performance criteria in order to justify higher premiums. To my knowledge this is not the case. So until it happens, I will be content to use "budget tyres" and leave it those who have more money than sense to pay a "premium" for premium tyres. Just hink about the huge investments by the big tyre companies in marketing and sponsorships and then ask yourself how is this money recouped. In the price of the end product of course!
Would the extra spend on rubber be offset by the reduced premiums, though? It'd have to be a fairly good discount...
I've been down the budget road.... never again! Its a once in a life time thing, but when you do 'call' upon your tyres to excel (wet braking at speed) you'll know why you should've chosen the premiums. Plus, there have been plenty of test done by magazines, respected motoring groups, etc with a simple, undeniable truth, budgets are NOT worth it. There are only 4-6 sq inch of rubber at each corner, make it the best rubber it can be!
£300 for a set of Premium tyres! Where? maybe for a Micra. I drive a family estate car and it was the choice between £300 budget and £600 premium. All the reviews I've read in choosing my tyres, one fact came up again and again. Some tyres are better suited to some cars and the same with tyre profiles. Also, when you look at tyre prices and these reviews, it's always budget verses Premium, the cheapest verses the most expensive. What about middle of the road? I could have bought tyres for my car for £200 or less and top performance tyres £800+ Will they compare? I think not.
Anyway going back to my budget tyres, I'm very happy with price/performance/comfort and knowing I wasn't fleeced! One fact to remember. Premium Tyre manufacturers are to the car industry as Printer companies are to consumers. Practically give them away and then reap the rewards at refill/replacement time.
Erm, probably, yes. The test car is a Focus. I will shortly be outfitting my Clio with a pair of Hankooks (3rd place in a recent tyrereviews / auto bild shootout... the best all-season hoops I could get at rather short notice) that will cost me £160 all-in. In other words, the equivalent of £320 for 4, including fitting, for decent mid-range jobs that may not exactly be top-whack Contis or what-have-you, but certainly hold their own with Goodyear, Bridgestone and the like.
The assumption may be that if you can afford to run a larger, slightly more upmarket car like a mid-high-spec Focus or Mondeo, you may be less prepared to cut corners on things like tyres, but if you're a bit short, the temptation may be there. I expect the Focus uses slightly larger tyres than my 185/55 R15s (though not by much? I've had a Megane with 185/65s and an Astra with 195/60s on the same rims...), so the budget horrors could well stack up to £300... but I'd be surprised to pay £200 to outfit my own car with similar tyres of last resort.
After all, there's a couple places nearby (ostensibly walking-with-a-sack-barrow distance from home, should it come to that) that offer usable part-worns for £10 a corner (£15-20 including fitting and all the rest...). I'm not convinced I wouldn't go for that instead of paying £40 a go for full-tread ones that would otherwise have worse grip and longevity.
Price goes up seemingly exponentially with size. You have a large car. You're going to pay more than us plebs with city hatchbacks. It's just one of those things, sadly.
Incidentally, I think this test HAD to be extreme, to properly highlight how much of a difference there CAN be, and that buying tyres is much more like buying cheese, than buying milk (which you could compare to petrol, maybe?). The cheapest stuff will still get you about and offer a certain level of performance, so long as you're satisfied with driving around in the most bland, paranoid, tiptoe manner possible; but if you can afford to upgrade, you certainly get what you pay for.
Though it would also have been useful to have a third choice, some randomly chosen midranger in there, to show that - like cheese, and consumer electronics - significant upgrades can be possible by spending not that much more than the budget choice. You can buy nasty Value-brand "mild cheddar-style" cheese, and it'll sort of fill out your sandwich on a basic level, or premium extra strong branded stuff that everyone knows from TV adverts... but paying somewhere in-between for the non-value, supermarket own-brand mature cheddar will likely satisfy you just as much in most circumstances.
(Hmm that analogy kind of fell apart ... and I can often be found buying the equivalent of part-worn cheese with a yellow sticker on it from the clearance shelf... but, whatever)
So what were the results on the constant radius circle for the budget tyres - what G and what on-the-limit speed, besides the twitchy behaviour?
Also if you have more time in future would you maybe repeat this test with 3 or 5 sets of each of the best rated mid-price tyres and the cheapest possible budget choices, just to preclude the possibility of the Triangles being a spectacularly poor brand (or a bad batch)?I will say I've noticed a distinct improvement myself between random budget nonsense (Arrowspeed, I think it was?) and the subsequent fitting of a set of Michelins, but it's no reason to get sloppy with the science! :)
I agree with this. I also like to add that there are really bad budget tyres and good budget/mid range tyres, for example on my ST Mondeo I've had Continentals which tramlined in the road like a pig once they started to wear, Bridgestones that wore to quick. I then bought Falken FK452s good mid range tyre (were £75 as suppossed to £125ea) but also wore too quick now I have GT Radial Champiro HPX's which are brilliant tyres they cost me originally £67 ea fitted and will keep on buying these (although now seeing these near the £95 fitted). Also on the subject of budget tyres, how come the prices have crept up (GT radials, Vredestein etc) to be priced a lot nearer premiun brands? and not budget priced anymore. Whats changed?)
Vredestein are a brand who only sells to very selective retailer around the UK, as they do not want to de-value their brand by becoming a "volume tyre". Therefore there is a chance you have found them expensive if someone is taking advantage of the supply and demand. We sell Vredestein as a upper mid-range / lower premium as after many years of selling them we find them to be a very good tyre, especially there winter tyres.
As for GT radials, I am sorry to inform you they are a true Budget brand. In the last set of industry reports there were found to be around 6-9 true premium brands in the UK, another 9-11 mid-range (there is always some overlap on these categories as manufacturers tyres improve) and around 300 Budget brands.
Many people will find budget brands are fine for them, as they drive steady and luckily have never been in a situation where they have had to brake hard or rely on their tyres to respond quickly and correctly to avoid an accident.
However no one can tell when you will need to rely on your tyres to help avoid an accident and there is no denying when it comes to wet braking especially no budget tyre will outperform a premium.
But with the launch of EU Tyre Labelling later this year all this will become much clearer as all tyres sold in the UK will have a label on much like with white goods. This label will display a rating for Wet braking, Fuel efficiency and external noise and so the differneces in quality will be much more obvious.
As a side note most retailers in the industry genuinely make less profit from the sales of premium tyres than budgets, seeing as the cost of premiums are much higher to begin with the markup applied is normally much less to encourage sales. It is hard enough to get customers to part with their hard earned money for a purchase they dont really want to have to make, so when your are encouraged to buy premium this is because the retailer is genuinely advising you based on their industry experience and not to make more money from you. It is those who advise budget sales that need to be watched as they are just looking to make the most money and not thinking about the well being of their customers.
This is a very good, and accurate post! Thanks for taking the time to write :) The only problem with the tyre labelling law is the policing of it - we've heard rumours budget manufacturers are just printing labels with the score they want, without actually testing!
Sorry to the OP having not got back with the G limits on the CR circle, they seem to have gone missing. From memory, it was around 0.22g Budget and 0.36g premium (low grip surface)
...yikes :D
That's less than 2/3rds the cornering power O_O
Or in other words, if I'm working this out correctly, you can bring over 50% more direction-changing force to bear, and thus enter and leave the same corner (or unexpected swerve event) more than 1.5x faster with the Contis.
Going by your statement of the grip limit being about 35mph, that means 30-35mph with the continentals = you get out of a swerve situation just fine, if a bit shook up... 25mph with the budgets = CRASH. Uhh, remind me why speed cameras don't base their trigger speed off a transponder in the tyre that relays what rubber you have on, again? Someone with the triangles going past at a perfectly legal 29 could be more of a danger to the public than a conti user passing at a flash-triggering 34...
Which sort of mirrors my previously mentioned experience with budget vs premium (man, I was poor at the time - £40 per corner for Michelin felt like splashing out). Got a particular memory of being able to stay reasonably (albeit not "perfectly", they were still only Energys) composed at normal speeds around a certain roundabout, in the wet, that I'd previously always been a slithery mess on and had to slow right down for.
It's not quite as bad these days when even my mum's dinky 500 wears 185-section shoes (vs 145 on my old Polo of similar weight, and 195 on a decidedly more portly Astra) so it's hard to reach the grip limits in everyday driving regardless of what brand you use, but I would suspect it'd still make quite a difference in emergency situations - whether reacting to a sudden danger, or pushing hard to get somewhere at speed. Since having to switch out the vaguely-premium but rather worn tyres on the front of my current Clio for the ultra-budget but full-tread (presumably, using a compound more reminiscent of mobile phone case plastic than actual rubber) rears - all tyres being those that came with when I bought the car secondhand - I've had the good fortune of only yet having to test their prowess in the dry. They hold on reasonably well, but by heck do they make a lot of noise even under fairly mild cornering or moderately hard braking... With the windows down, it sounds like the SFX track from World's Wildest Police Chases. As tyre squeal is the sound of contact being lost and then rapidly regained, I expect the first time I try to go around a sharp, wet corner at speed will be interesting...
(Luckily(?) one of them has picked up a bit of a gouge - and its alloy, an ugly nick - from an ill advised kerb-mounting attempt, and I'll be swapping it and the more worn ex-front for a pair of all-season Hankook Optimos come friday. Fingers crossed they live up to the Auto Bild hype. At £80 a pop they'd better...)
BTW... a tyre company calling themselves "Triangle"... surely that should be a humorously veiled warning? :D
A great couple of posts, thanks!
On a side point, if Triangle amuses you wait until you're offered "Landsail" tyres. Being one of the cheapest budgets they'll most likely do exactly what they say on the tin - the first sign of rain will have you sailing, not driving!
Rubbish, I have had 2 set's of Landsail tyres the last being on my Honda Legend 3.5L V6, a big heavy car but capable of being pretty quick when asked. They have been a great tyre. Now I'm in my 50's and an X driving instructor and HGV DRIVER/INSTRUCTOR but and more importantly a biker since the age of 16 and have owned and raced Bikes, iv'e had over 40 motorbikes over 900cc and my fair share of sport cars, I used to drive quite ahem quickly when I was younger but in my defense had a talent for doing so on both bikes and in cars, (and I have a clean license and over 30 years no claims). when it comes to things like tyres, brake pads, etc everything is relevant, E.G. there would be little point sticking a set of top Bridgestones on a 500cc cruiser type bike but dangerous sticking yang clung dung tyres to a supersports bike capable of lapping the I.O.M TT circuit at 133 mph, bike tyres are indeed very very important, more so than cars as your putting huge amounts of power and expecting really good grip on a contact patch with the tarmac the size of a babies hand ! going back to car tyres again it really is horses for courses, I used to have a friend in the tyre industry who new more about car tyres than most of the people selling tyres ! Now I might like to drive quickly every now and then where the situation allows but I often have one if not both of my younger sons in my sports car with me whose lives I value above all else and would never purposely put them (or any one else for that matter in harms way). Due to early retirement i'm also careful with money, so my advice to anyone is to do some research before buying your tyres, why you ask ? the bloke at the garage surely knows what he's selling me ? possibly but not necessarily, find a forum for your car and read what other people have tried, you should get a really well balanced view from drivers of all types with the same car who have done your research for you, trust me it's better information than you will get from the odd motoring journalist, even car manufacturers are now reading these forums to see how they can improve their products. My second piece of advice is it doesn't matter what tyres you fit if your car has a loose ball joint, tracking out,wrong tyre pressures etc even the cheapest tyre on a well setup and maintained car will work better than the best tyres you can buy on a car thats poorly maintained and not setup correctly, in fact my experience has shown me that many people who complained about their tyres had suspension problems or misalignment problems which once sorted seemed to make their tyres a lot better, hmmmm funny that ;0)
The point here is YES premium tyres are better quality better performing and maybe slightly longer lasting but at up to 3x the price they are DEFINITELY not 3x better or 3x longer lasting. A premium will last roughly 10-15% longer at 300% the price. Therefore please don't bother with premium unless you drive your car extremely hard or for racing where that tiny bit of extra grip is nessessary regardless of price. Much more important is making sure your tracking is perfect and pressure is as it should be these two factors will have a far greater impact on the handling and longevity of the tyre rather than the brand. Don't forget part of the price you pay with the big brands is advertising.
Some good common sense here. I have been involved with
the fitting of more than 100,000 tyres over the years and its always
interesting listening to the owners of cars that have gone from premium and
upper mid range tyres to budget thinking that they are saving money. If they
are honest they tell us how little grip compared to quality the budgets have.
Also a lot of budget tyres are quite noisy. Still not all drivers can feel the
difference as not all drivers are equal or have had to call on the tyres
performance when they need to. Just a thought no other component on a car can
affect its performance more that the tyre if we rule out the squishy organic
lump behind the steering wheel.
Just a footnote if
you break down the costs of owning tyres over the life of the tyre a good one
to a cheap one is likely to be about £20 a year for an average motorists. I
know my safety is worth this and more.
hi you seem to know about tyres i have a ford mondeo 2.0 and am looking for a tyres for it however reading all these reports and reviews what would you advise for the car i do have a family of 5 so car safty comes first i like the goodyear eagle f1 assymmetric 2 please help lol