I have a feeling this is going to be a long thread with opinions all over the map, mine included. And Daniel Stern may have it right - you could be a troll motivated to generate a predictably long discussion for whatever reason.
I am an engineer, but not with experience or technical competency in tires - only what I have picked up as a consumer for 35+ years of driving and DIY'ing who happens, for good or bad, to have an engineer's brain (some might say that I had better give it back, or maybe even that I'm due a refund).
Here are my opinions, probably none of which I can prove: Use the UTQG standards (see
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ratingsthat are by law printed on at least one side of every tire: Treadwear,Traction, Temperature. Having worked in industry in engineering and management in competitive situations, I've got to believe that there's a quite a bit of stretching of the specs. by the manufacturers, and there's probably very little if any meaningful enforcement for truth in specifications. Lacking any other information to the contrary, I have to simplify things and assume that they all cheat the same amount, so that would mean the specs. are a good indicator for comparison shopping (and I asssume the tests to determine the ratings are meaningful, which they probably are - wouldn't be surprised if someone wants to argue with that, but that's a starting point).
No reason these days to go anything less than 400 on treadwear rating. There are some darn good affordable tires out there with 600 to 650 ratings.
Most tires (probably all I have seen) have an A traction rating - so apparently that's very do-able even for a lower end tire (maybe the spec. ranges are two broad).
Most temp. ratings are A or B. Don't go lower than B.
My personal philosophy: Elminate so-called "hi-performance" tires from your search. Unless your *only* criteria for selection is road grip, you will get very low bang for the buck - and road grip is not going to be
*that* much better regardless. "Hi-performance" tires, as a category, have the following characeristics: (1) Much more expensive unless you settle for even more compromises in the design and quality than reasonable. (2) They have poor tread life (way lower than a good, reasonably priced touring tire). (3) They have a tendency to have larger tread features (I forget what you call the individual islands of rubber that make up the tread pattern), which tend to cause funky wear patterns that become very noisy starting near the middle of their short tread life. (4) As a bonus to all the other issues, short of catastrophic failure or your brother-in-law owning the tire store, you will never get a warranty adjustment on a "hi-performance" tire even if you can document timely alignments, maintenance, etc. - they don't care - the manufacturer assumes that purchasers of "hi-performance" tires, by their very nature, abuse their tires - burden of proof is on the consumer - and nothing is provable - so forget it.
Also - buy your tires from the same place you get them installed, balanced, and rotated and that does your alignments. And get printouts of your alignments. The fewer parties that are involved, the less finger pointing to avoid honoring a warranty claim if a problem should occur (i.e., installer refers you to seller, seller refers you to manufacturer, manufacturer refers you to the alignment shop, ad infinitum - you get the picture.
When price shopping apples-to-apples, be sure to add up *all* costs and benefits of buying mail order and local shop.
**Mail order: Add in cost of shipping and paying a local shop for mounting and balancing. Problems 10,000 miles down the road? No help from them.
**Local shop: Mounting and initial balancing included in price - no shipping cost added. Many/most shops give free balancing and rotation for the life of the tires purchased there. Also see above re: buying/installing/rotating/alignments all being single source (things go a *lot* smoother if problems).
Can I assume you're not going to be driving well over 100 mph? Good. Then stick with T or H rated tires (good for extended driving up to 118 mph). To go to higher speed ratings, other things are compromised as evidenced that many tires are available in T/H speed rating with a given treadwear rating or guarantee whereas the same tire (same exact model of tire) in a V speed rating will have a significantly lower treadwear rating or guarantee.
Most tread depths are 10 to 12 mm. If you have the treadwear rating - it doesn't matter. Who cares what the intial depth is if it has whatever treadwear rating. The only difference it could make is at beginnng of tire life for resistnace to hydroplaning, but there are much greater determinants of that in the other aspects of the tread design.
Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')