Yes they are high performance summer tires and yes I really enjoyed them but they are used up at 8000 miles. Frankly, they were used up 1500-2000 miles ago I just pushed them a little longer, driving them only on warmer dry days. The pic is of the front driver's side on a front wheel drive car. No auto X's or HPDE's, just daily driving. Any other's with this sort of experience? Since I have taken the pic all have been replaced with Michelin Pilots Sports.
8000? You're approaching motorcycle tire longevity there. That's good for a bike but not unheard of.
OE tires seem to either wear (and grip) like iron, or wear extremely rapidly. The original NSX's tires might last 3000 miles if you babied them, something about having a directional bias built in that stressed the front contact patches outward and the rears inward. (Four different, position specific tires per car)
In the late 90s, Volvo V70s came with tires that lasted about 10k before they were slicks. Working at a Goodyear retailer, we had a lot of complaints.
No offense to anyone else, but PZero tires are total garbage.
I like the Pzeros on my Merc, but given the rate they wear out, you'd think I was drifting with the thing.
Just FYI, the Michelin Pilot Sports I had on my MINI Clubman S lasted less than 20K, and frankly weren't all that impressive, especially in rain.
Hope you have better luck with yours.
Nothing but praise for the pilot sport 4S here.
PZeros on my 991.1. No complaints.
Olemiss540 said:Nothing but praise for the pilot sport 4S here.
Only negatives about them are that they aren't the stickiest on track and tend to chunk a bit when hot. Oh, and if you buy them new, THE PRICE. But wet grip, road manners, overall lifespan, consistency, all amazing.
My Merc goes through any soft summer performance tire in 7-10k. Hard acceleration is the killer as the TC allows the optimal amount of tire slip that while you may not notice it the tires are slipping and waring out. I eventually got tired of replacing them every season so I went to continentals high performant all seasons. Much better ware great wet and acceptable snow/ice performance decent summer/dry performance. Another fun fact is if you don't make the time to change out your blizacks and drive them for a couple thousand miles in the hot late spring they will ware out completely in a couple thousand miles. They ware faster in the heat than summer performance tires do. That was a costly mistake as I got less than 5k total miles out of that set. (One winter and spring driving on them)
If it matters my car is a CLS. 550 at about 5k lbs and 4matic. Heavier high hp cars eat soft summer tires if driven with even the slightest amount of fun.
Feedyurhed said:Yes they are high performance summer tires and yes I really enjoyed them but they are used up at 8000 miles. Frankly, they were used up 1500-2000 miles ago
What kind of car do you have?
I'm not sure if this is true, but I feel like some cars are setup to rely more on the tires to extract performance. My FiST eats tires and it's only 2600lbs. For instance, I got 18k out of a set of Firestone Indy 500s.
dean1484 said:Another fun fact is if you don't make the time to change out your blizacks and drive them for a couple thousand miles in the hot late spring they will ware out completely in a couple thousand miles. They ware faster in the heat than summer performance tires do. That was a costly mistake as I got less than 5k total miles out of that set. (One winter and spring driving on them)
That is an interesting data point. I put winters on my XJ in December 2022. I drove them 5000 miles that winter and I've put another 7500 summer miles on them and they still look great. Guess that's the difference between a light weight slow car vs a heavy and powerful car.
In reply to buzzboy :
I left my Blizzaks on for most of the summer on a 4000lb car. (225/45-18) They made the most hilarious sounds under heavy cornering. Not a squeal, not a howl, more of a pained guttural grumbling moan of discontent.
The rears are absolutely horrid. They were at the start of winter and got worse. They get choppy fast, especially on the rear of a car with 2 degrees of negative camber and enough toe-in that people just accept that the car will "side hop" over one wheel bumps.
I heard a rumor, and it's been backed up by my experience and a few hundred other examples. The rumor goes that OEMs spec their own rubber for tires to be installed, and it's either cheap rubber, or just really sticky/soft rubber to impress you on a test drive. My friends' Genesis wiped its all-season rubber in 14k. Dad's new truck needed tires at 18k. My ex's Scion needed tires at 20k.
I don't know if that's true, but it's enough evidence that I wouldn't base future purchases on the lifespan of a factory tire.
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
You can oftentimes BUY the OE spec tires.
The OE tires for Nissan GTRs made for great cheater tires for cars they would fit. You had to hunt for the GTR specific part number, it was different from the "normal" tire. IIRC they were worth a couple seconds per lap.
Lexus LS400 had a specific Goodyear Eagle GA that was a lot quieter than normal GAs that you'd find on a Grand Prix. I remember this vividly.
Snrub said:Feedyurhed said:Yes they are high performance summer tires and yes I really enjoyed them but they are used up at 8000 miles. Frankly, they were used up 1500-2000 miles ago
What kind of car do you have?
I'm not sure if this is true, but I feel like some cars are setup to rely more on the tires to extract performance. My FiST eats tires and it's only 2600lbs. For instance, I got 18k out of a set of Firestone Indy 500s.
2023 Kona N and I believe you are correct.
These P-Zeros didn't even last 1,000 miles. Junk, I say!
I changed over to winter tires on my FiST. The Conti ECS 02 went from 10/32 to 6.5/32. Rears went to 9/32. I put like 4k miles on them since spring. I think I might be looking at using the tread life warranty in say 4 years. I don't know how realistic that is.
I am not easy on the throttle, but I don't do burnouts, etc and there is no autoX, or track use.
I was always a bit suspicious OEM tires for performance cars where a bit stickier than might be practical since tires are a huge factor in performance testing numbers.
I also wonder if there is an example of a car that has higher tested performance stats than a similar higher performance car simply because of the tires it came with.
We had a lateral grip performance spec set for one of the Saleen models in development and made our target by spec'ing a tire with a 6000 mile UTOQ rating. The budget folks were not entertained. We contended the target buyers were not going to drive the cars more than the 6000 miles per year and would have the means to keep fresh tires on the cars.
Not exactly the same as more common production cars, but definitely not a one-off.
aircooled said:I also wonder if there is an example of a car that has higher tested performance stats than a similar higher performance car simply because of the tires it came with.
Nissan GTR, for one. It relied on fancy rubber to counter its immense weight. People on corner-carvers were finding that they worked VERY well on other cars.
Early NSX may also count, they had special NSX-only construction that aided and increased the car's responsiveness.
The final year RX-7 Turbo II had a special Japan only model that had crazy sticky tires from the factory, too. They'd collect pebbles in the rubber.
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:I heard a rumor, and it's been backed up by my experience and a few hundred other examples. The rumor goes that OEMs spec their own rubber for tires to be installed, and it's either cheap rubber, or just really sticky/soft rubber to impress you on a test drive. My friends' Genesis wiped its all-season rubber in 14k. Dad's new truck needed tires at 18k. My ex's Scion needed tires at 20k.
I don't know if that's true, but it's enough evidence that I wouldn't base future purchases on the lifespan of a factory tire.
This makes sense. My experience is going the other way though. The tries on my Subaru finally dry rotted at 6 years old and 85k miles. There was still meat left! Not performance tires by any means. The closest spec replacement (same brand and model, different model #) are much better reviewed in terms of performance but have a lower lifespan.
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:I heard a rumor, and it's been backed up by my experience and a few hundred other examples. The rumor goes that OEMs spec their own rubber for tires to be installed, and it's either cheap rubber, or just really sticky/soft rubber to impress you on a test drive. My friends' Genesis wiped its all-season rubber in 14k. Dad's new truck needed tires at 18k. My ex's Scion needed tires at 20k.
I don't know if that's true, but it's enough evidence that I wouldn't base future purchases on the lifespan of a factory tire.
It's 100% true that OE versions of a tire are typically different from those purchased on the replacement aftermarket. But...not always for the nefarious reasons you mention. Yes, some may be compromised more towards dry grip at the expense of wet (looking at you PS4S), but more often than not it's a fitment and/or handling tweak. Nothing can affect handling as much as tires, so a minor tweak can transform the feel of a particular car. And if you are going to order 100K tires for your vehicle, the tiremaker is quite happy to spend money tweaking it for you. OE fitments are where the money is for tiremakers.
BTW, you can usually get those same OE tires if you purchase from the dealership, though usually at much higher prices than the aftermarket.
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