The great quality debate and paying extra.

[mickvp]

Always used to put cheapo tyres on my cars, but I did a lot of mileage all on m'ways. Pointless buying expensive tyres for that!
I suppose it depends again on what you use it for and how deep your pockets are!

Exactly this.

I have had a few "performance" cars with 200bhp+. its pointless putting lingwongs on them, as it will totally destroy the handling of the car. for performance cars, you need good tyres IMO to get the best experience. remember some cheap tyres are also only rated to a certain speed, which is sometimes unsuitable for autobahn speeds, hence you need a better rated tyre.

However, my last car was a diesel Mondeo. average performance (130bhp), bags of torque. I never had it over 70, never rallied/raced it. I bought it as a cheap commuter which would return good MPG. that car always had cheap tyres on it with no ill effects because the aim of the car was to be as cheap as possible - I wouldnt have saw the benefit of a better tyre.

For my Golf, Ive just bought a set of 2 front tyres last week, having the same issues as you Noggy - about 2mm of tread and the car is all over the place. I'm not a big believer in "winter" tyres, but summer tyres can be ha cheap this time of year. Just got a set of 2 Goodyear efficientgrip performance tyre (in 225/40/18) for £90 each fitted. not too bad for a performance tyre IMO.

The noise/economy/wet grip figures look good too, but ive not used them a great deal yet:

http://www.blackcircles.com/catalogue/go...e=32248041

Worth noting that black circles shows those specs for all car tyres on their site - so its a good source to use even just to compare those figures.

On the issue of noise - I think a lot of their "rating" is hokum. yes - you can measure the level of noise coming from the tyre, but you cant measure how those acoustic frequencies will react when fitted to a specific car. It is possible for the "quietest" tyre to be noisier than another "noisier" tyre on a given car, due to the way the acoustics react - maybe the level of noise is at a different frequency which will react better inside the chassis.


I think im rambling again... I better stop :lol