I have run numerous models of tires on cars I would like to drive in the near future, and have a good idea, based on those ratings, of which tires are best for which vehicle.
My friendly retail rep at Town Fair Tire here in the northeast says to "not pay attention" to the ratings (the green, yellow, pink, & red bars) and other measurements on Tire Rack. He claims that in many cases, those ratings are bought and paid for.
Is he right? Or is there at least some validity in the ratings on TireRack?
I've used the owner reviews for my specific car and those close to it in selecting a couple sets of tires. They pretty much matched what I found when I bought the tires. Never did a review myself, as the first set of tires were discontinued by Goodyear shortly after I bought them, and the second set already had plenty of reviews and I had nothing to add. So I can't guarantee the reviews are real, but have no reason to doubt them. Maybe somebody here actually did a review, but usenet is just a small part of the wider web. So even if not, it doesn't mean anything. All I can say is what I said.
Which TFT are you going to? Some of them are very good, and others... I've seen smarter boxes of rocks. Even in the same store.
The best rep in my area got moved up to corporate, and while the TWO people they hired to take his place at least know what tires are, they don't know as much as he did.
Good for him, bad for us.
Also, I'm not in the town where the nearest TFT is anymore, so I use a place closer to home, a local store owned by City Tire. They have a boatload of knowledge there about tires, since they have all been in the tire business for a combined 100 years!!
I have no problems with the ratings on Tire Rack, since they are taken from surveys of people who bought the tires.
The only thing that stands out is that often the results of the road tests of tires performed by TR drivers in specific test platforms (typically a higher-end performance model such as a 3- or 5-series) and the consumer ratings(green, yellow, pink bars) and comments below often contradict each other. I.E. A specific tire has above average traction in the slaloms during TireRack's tests, where as it might get only a "pink" square in the consumer ratings grid for traction and a wide disparity of evaluations in the comments section!
Or, TireRacks' road tests of another tire produces sub-par steering response yet most consumers feel that steering response(and perhaps straight-line tracking) is more than adequate with that tire. Go figure!
Maybe this is why my Fairfield County TFT rep doesn't place much value in TR's ratings.
I think the ratings are just from plain folks like us. I'd put more stock in the tirerack customer ratings then in whoever is selling tires, not because the guy selling the tires is necessarily lying, but because at least the tirerack ratings are based on the opinions of a lot of people instead of just one or two.
I guess the reason I'm asking about TireRack's ratings is that I have purchased tires for my cars at Town Fair for just about the last 20 years. When I discovered TireRack and their very detailed ratings & reviews, I started to ask TFT if they sold some of the brands that were at least in the top five in their category, I.E. "all-season, performance all-season". In my case, with my particular car, I lucked out:
I was looking for a H-rated tire last year for my '05 Malibu, and at the time the Yokohama AVID-H4S was #3 or 4 out of a dozen tires in the performance all-season category. TFT sold the H4S and that's what I have happily had on the Malibu since August of 2007.
On the other hand, I've looked for Khumos and some other top-five rated tires in their category at TFT, and TFT does not sell them. Why? TFT's rep said to me, and I'm paraphrasing: "Just because a tire rates very high in TireRack's system doesn't mean it's the best tire for your particular application" or something along those lines.
I'm very likely going to be driving a differnt car before the spring time - possibly a used one - and I'm hoping that at least some of the tires that rated highly at TireRack can be bought at Town Fair. I like TFT's prices, the work-ethic of both the sales floor people and the garage techs, and their honesty about work needing to be done, at my local TFT. And there really is no other choice in town besides Goodyear and Firestone - and the only Dunlops, Yokohamas, and Pirellis I'm gonna find there are in the recycling dumpster. ;)
I have to admit, I was buying my tires wholesale from TFT (or, at a discount they gave dealers...) and at ~8,000 miles I ran over a nail in the road and flattened one of my Hankook K-106's on my Supra and after only driving 200 feet on it before i realized it was flat, it was ruined. (great tire BTW...I have a removable roof and I was afraid of road noise. Nope! And although I never drive the car in the winter, I had to move it one time over some ice and snow. The tires are listed as "All Season" and I had no problem moving the car! They handle well, also
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At first they didn't want to honor the warranty because I bought them on a discount, but after a couple e-mails they told me to go to where I bought the tires. I had paid $72 each for them; they looked at the tire and offered me a new one for $45. GREAT! Fine with me!
The only other problem I had was a young tech FORGOT TO TORQUE THE LUG NUTS, and the next day one of the rear tires fell off (and almost bounced over a bridge railing!)
They rented me a loaner, paid for a new plastic trim piece and paid the Toyota dealer to install the piece, check the rim and install new outer bearings.
Translation: We don't carry it and would prefer to sell you what we do have rather then have you buy elsewhere. Since you'll never be able to personally compare, you'll never know if you made a mistake by listening to us.
_________________ Well like I said - I was LUCKY with those Avid H4S from Yoky. They happened to be both: Rated highly on TireRack, and, sold by my local Town Fair. It's a combination that is probably more the exception than the rule. YMMV - widely!
My suggestion to participants and lurkers here: FInd out what your local wholesaler stocks - get specific model#s, take 'em home and run 'em through TireRack. Also, consider that individual driving preferences vary - what one driver on TireRack self describes as "easy- going" may feel like Fittipaldi or Schumaker or Earnhardt to another. ;)
Also people should keep in mind that a tires performance when half thru it's life may not be anything like it was when it was new. That's one of the benefits of Tirerack customer ratings, a lot of customers will add comments after they have quite a few thousand miles on their tires or when they are buying a second set because they liked the first. I bought some Yoko dBs tires because they were supposed to be really quiet. They were, for the first 5000 miles or so. They wound up so noisy I got rid of them as soon as I could justify it at about
22K. They were also very bad at tracking ruts and would jerk the car from side to side. I replaced them with Kuhmo's and they have been much better in every way but one, they use nylon which flat spots so they rumble a bit for the first several miles till they warm up.
Personally, I put VERY little faith in most customer reviews of tires, whether they be at TireRack, Discounttire.com, or whatever. All you have to do is read a few to see that some people are commenting on the wrong tire or that their comments are more due to comparing new tires to old, rather than one brand to the other. And it gets ridiculous when I see reviews o reviews of good, solid mid-line tires that I've owned personally and the people gripe because they don't perform like top-of-the-line V-rated Michelins or Bridgestones. If you want that kind of performance, buy that kind of tire. Don't expect if from a tire that costs half as much. I tend to read all the reviews very critically and TRY to find someone who writes like they know what they're talking about. But those are few and far between.
All true, but if there are enough reviews you can glean those that are useful. If the reviewer says "I just got these tires today and they are the greatest tires I ever owned" you skip to the next review. One thing that makes customer reviews useful is when a good portion of the reviewers slam the product. Easy to avoid that product. By the same token if it gets universal praise, you'll probably be satisfied. I recently bought the washing machine my wife wanted, and it had numerous and generally good reviews. But enough clunkers that I broke my rule and popped for the warranty. Rather have info I have to sort through than no info.
My TA is getting new tires next year - I've decided that all I care about is dry traction, so I'll be springing for BFG KD's. I've talked to tirerack already in the past and they both agreed with me that they were great dry traction tires, but gave me a short list of others to check out that may be just as good in the dry and better in the wet. I've never felt pressured to buy one brand or the other.
I think ranking tires is difficult at best and that's part of the problem - people want a $99 tire that lasts 200,000 miles and can pull
2G's in the corner, go through snow and rain and launch like a drag slick. It's also tricky because test driving tires is impossible - no one's going to lend you a set of tires to eval and then return...
Use tirerack as a tool, but at the end of the day, you have to decide and yes, you do run the risk of getting crap. I replaced the factory Goodyears with Kumho Ecsta MX's and never did like them. They didn't balance properly, they didn't give any more grip and the dry and had way less wet grip. They were cheaper than the Goodyears, but I should have spent the money.
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