Just remember this : when people give their ratings to the tyre / purchase, it's usually given within a week or so of having the tyres put on - so they're comparing their new tyres with 7mm tread depth to the old, worn-out tyres which had no grip left. So most 'poor' feedback is due to the purchase / delivery / fitting going wrong, and nothing to do with the tyre quality. Have a look at the detailed feedback, and you'll see what I mean.

Not much use if the tyres scrub through the tread depth in 5k miles, though ...

I drive a BMW that is shod with large wheels. Decent (Pirelli Pzero) RFTs are expensive - £200 a corner.

The fronts last about 35k miles. The backs last about 18k miles. (It's a RWD car). So that costs me (about) £1200 in tyres, every 35k miles. Which is about 3p per mile.

Now, I could get unbranded tyres for about £80 a piece. So technically, that would reduce my costs to (roughly) £480 per 35k miles.

But only if the tyres last as long as the PZeros. If they wear faster, then my savings are less. If they're awful on grip or road noise, then I'm going to hate them, and want to change back to quality tyres sooner.

Skimping on tyres is usually a mistake.

The grip ratings are submitted by the maker after their own tests, make you own mind up what to make of them and which brand you might trust, recent emissions scandals have shown all is not above board no matter how big the company and how much they might spend on advertising.

Depends what you want from a tyre, if i have a car that's inclined to be skittish on poor tyres then wet grip is the only consideration within reason, and i do not care if they last half as long as the premium brand (which may not be as good in wet anyway), so long as they were half the price of the premium to begin with i'm happy, it's my general experience that tyres with exceptional grip don't wear all that well and some tyres that do wear well can be awful in the wet, with various degrees betwee the two.

For what its worth i usually keep to middling brands, on cars that might be Uniroyal (wet grip is fantastic), Vredestein, Nokian, but if there's a serious deal on any (non Chinese) make on any of the tyre sites i use i'll snap them up if they check out as ok.

The other thing is how some tyres can suit one car but be hopeless on others, Pirelli P6000's used to be called on some sites, yet i had a set on a fast Merc estate and they were rock solid on the road regardless of conditions, never found MIchelins to live up to the hypethey enjoy but that might just be me.

Looking at customer ratings for tyres is completely pointless. Unless the customer in question has been in a situation where they have had to make an emergency manoeuvre to avoid an accident it is just an opinion on how they feel the tyre permorms under normal circumstances. Plus, as Rob says, they are comparing their old and worn tyre to a new one, which is not really comparitive. Look at it like this, your car's only contact with the road surface is through 4 small patches of rubber. Because of this i truly despair of people who save money by putting on cheap tyres, it really is a false economy. By all means, do some research to find out which tyre performs best, but look only at independant tests, where a wide variety of tyres have been tested on the same car under the same test conditions. I recently bought a set of michelin all weather tyres for my '06 130k mile transit connect. Bought them off ebay, they were not that expensive, i think about £220 for the 4, and had a local garage fit and balance them. The total cost was well under what a local tyre depot was quoting me for 4 'mid quality' tyres.

At the end of the day, you will only learn the real difference between a good quality tyre, and a poor quality tyre when you are in an emergency situation.

I've been averse to Chinese and other cheap tyres for a long time, i tried an experiment to see if my own prejudices were still valid a couple of years ago by buying a set of tyres (Taiwan i believe) that came up cheap, started off ok, remarkably quiet and smooth riding, didn't use them through the winter so can't comment but oh boy second year still at 7mm they put the wind up me a couple of times with full unprovoked tail slides, they came straight off, prejudices confirmed as still valid.

My present Landcruiser came with a set of Nankangs, obviously only been on a few months so as new, and up to a point i can understand the previous owner saving £200 on a set if they knew they were trading the vehicle in soon.

I wanted to hate the things and have been itching for them to put a foot wrong so i can replace them and have had me finger poised on the buy now button several times, however will they falter will they heck, they are proving to grip like billio in the wet and provide a quiet smooth ride annoying though that is for me, the trouble is such big tyres tend to last around 40/50k miles so they might well be teasing me by being there and doing a good job for some years yet..:-)

Will i replace with Chinese tyres, not a hope.

Edited by gordonbennet on 03/04/2017 at 20:17

Never buy cheap tyres. It could cost you your life.

If you cannot afford to run a car then get the bus. Seriously, buy reasonable quality tyres, get advice from HJ or other sites and buy the BEST you can afford.

Look at this web site too ....

http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/

In my view, its a reasonably good website, but one feature it doesn't have is to be able to put in multiple reviews of the same tyres through their life, and be weighted to give a reasonable representation of what using them would be like - most reviews are a snapshot within the first 1000 miles (often far less), where most tyres seem fine, or when the owner gets rid of them, because they're worn out or hate them because they don't meet their expectations. Sort of similar to HJ's 'real mpg' (which often changes throughout the life of a car, especially early on and when its old [or not well maintained]).

Many tyres seem fine first of all (my previous set of OEM Bridgestone ER30s were fine for the first year [10k miles], but then went very hard and noisy, and were poor in the wet), but their 'true nature' soon becomes apparent. The problem is that if most reviews are for the first 1000 miles and only a few in mid-end-of-life, the results are skewed. WInter tyres in particular get spectacular reviews, but then they are used in certain conditions, and not as many summer tyres are - all year round.

The tests by the motoring magazines (shown on that website) are ok, but again aren't really looking at real-world conditions, mostly on a track and at the limit with higher-performance cars. Besides looking at the 'numbers' in the reviews (or averages over the reviews), I look at what the reviewers (users) say for similar cars to mine and who've reviewed them at the mid-life of the tyre. I also pay attention to how the user drives their car, which can make just as much of a difference as the tyres themselves to the ownership experience.

You can go on the ATS website and order at internet price for a fitting at the nearest ATS to you. Recently paid £120 each (fitted and VAT incl.) for Michelin runflats.