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How do you personally decide which tires to buy? Are there any particular brands you avoid? Do you buy at a department store(Sears), a discount store (Walmart), or a brand tire dealership?
Because of income, I buy the best I can afford which happens to be Firestone/Bridgestone. Can't afford Goodyear or Micheline. I try to avoid off brands. Some brands may be ok for some cars but I'm just not sure about them. I buy from the Firestone dealership. The tires are new and haven't been aging in a discount warehouse for many years. I take my tire shopping seriously. They are the most underrated part of the car that many seem to buy as a afterthought. They'll go to just about any store and ask for whatever fits their car. This may be ok foe some vehicles, but this is your life! I want tires that perform well in wet weather with a little performance capability should the need arise. What's sad is I'm finding that the older the car, the harder it is to find your factory size tires in big name brands. They've usually downgraded your size to their subsidiary brands.
Ok, maybe not garbage. The hard part about tire shopping is that except for very few brands/models of tire, they all have good and bad reviews. It depends on who was driving the car, what they know about tires, where/when/how it was driven, etc. Every one has their own opinion. I've had 6 sets of Michelins on 4 different vehicles and they all performed extremely well for their particular application. So I am a bit biased towards them.
The last set of tires I bought came with the aftermarket wheels I put on my GTO. I'd never considered Falkens but they're doing well so far. That's another thing-unless there's a gross problem, tires wear slowly enough that most people don't notice little issues. For instance, I hadn't noticed how loud the Dunlops I had were until I coasted down my street with the clutch in and the radio off. They'd probably been noisy for a while but with some combo of sound system/Magnaflows/windows down most of the time/etc., I just hadn't noticed.
I suggest looking at reviews from multiple sources, especially forums specific to your car. Ignore anyone who says "x is best" without knowing anything besides you're looking for tires, since there's no all encompassing tire. Tirerack and discount tire are great online resources and I know lots of people buy through them. I've bought numerous tires through Ebay and craigslist, and saved a bunch of money doing so. That also let me try some different tires without losing a ton of money. You need to know the DOT code to be sure the tires aren't old. If you do buy on Ebay, avoid a seller whose name is something like "vycbestusedtires". I had two bad experiences with them that were never resolved to my satisfaction.
1. Since I'm always driving a car with 100K+ miles on it, I assume the alignment and front end are not perfect, so if I'm going to wear tires excessively, I'd rather wear cheap ones.
2. Traction is inversely proportional to mileage rating. You can only get high miles from hard rubber, and you can only get traction from soft. Take your pick.
3. I'd never buy from a franchisee of a major tire (Firestone, Goodyear, etc.) They are thieves, and other retailers will sell their tires.
4. Tires don't need to be identical factory size if you are changing a pair at a time (both front or both rear).
5. The cause of my death will not be a blown tire. All new tires are safe enough.
6. It's better to buy cheap tires and change them when they're still decent, than to buy expensive ones and try to squeeze every penny out of them.
7. Never buy the warranty. It's zero-sum---you and the warranty company cannot both come out ahead. Guess who will?
8. Checking pressure and tread-wear pattern frequently will pay off in economy, performance, and safety, and is more important than the original purchase choice.
9. I don't see how one tread design can be worth $50 more than another, unless the tread is a Van Gogh and is an original.
Ordinarily, I look in the Yellow Pages and find the tire shop that sells either Kelly or Cooper. I haven't had one of those let me down yet. Preferably, a dealer who writes the receipt with a ball point pen, has been doing tires all his life, is watching to see that the job is done right, and wants to see a happy customer backing out., and will be there and remember you if you come back.
My opinion on tires is this: when the roads are dry, every tire is good enough for the average driver. If you happen to crash, it won't be because your tires have 12,6% less traction than the best ones, but because of some other reason. When it's wet, you just need to be careful, just like you should be if you have the very best, 2x expensive tires.
That said, I would never buy some cheap Chinese tire, but one that has good reputation, e.g. Bridgestone, Dunlop, Michelin... Every tire from those brands is good enough for your car, unless of course you drive a Ferrari or some other exotic model.
The most important thing for me is tire durability, second is noise, everything else is virtually non-important.
The problem with buying tires at places like Walmart, department stores, or discount tire stores is age. Many of the tires in these places are old. Check the date on the sidewall. When buying from a tire dealer, you generally get tires within a year or two old from date of production. Not all tires perform well. There was a recent article in which they tested a variety of tires including some from China. They were all the same size and put on the same car on the same track. The ones from China performed horribly. The $50 difference isn't about it's treadpattern. It's about the technology that went into the composition of the rubber, steel belts, and quality control measures. The tires from China had the exact same tread patter as a high dollar performance tire but because of it's poor rubber composition, it's traction was horrible. Tread pattern makes a difference in road noise and water displacement. I live in an area notorious for wet roads and virtually no snow and ice so I look at tires that do well in wet roads. I don't drive a performance car nor do I drive fast so I don't look at performance tires. Performance tires' rubber compound is made for gripping which means a softer compound and shortened treadlife. Generally, all season passenger tires have a harder tread compound which results in slightly less grip but increased tread life.
Much depends upon the intended use of the tires ... and the driver's expectations of what the tires are to do for them.
Everything is a trade-off ... traction, inclement weather driveability, tread wear, handling, noise, etc.
The OP's comments re "old tires sitting in a warehouse" don't jibe with what I've seen for the high volume mass marketers ... all of them have very high inventory turnover, and receive shipments from their manufactures/suppliers very frequently. For the most part, the inventory you see on the racks at the retail store is what they've got to sell ... they don't want a lot of merchandise sitting in an expensive warehouse space gathering dust and not generating a current ROI. Popular tire sizes move through inventory very quickly, be it a chain/franchise/mass merchandiser or mail-order tire store.
The only tires I've ever seen that are very old inventory come from a couple of major warehouses that specialize in buying up that merchandise and reselling it. They tend to specialize in odd or slow moving tire sizes for limited markets ....
Having had an automotive shop dealing in high end cars for decades, I can report that every major brand has their good and bad product in the marketplace ... for example, I have had excellent service from certain Michelin tires, and had more of those put on my customer's cars. Guess what? Michelin, too, changes their formulations and costs in production, and I've seen the identical tire size/model that gave good service not give good mileage or handling for the next production set. It's not a quality control issue, it's a current production run issue ....
Similarly, I've seen the same results with other major brands. What's interesting is that all of the major producers sell private label tires which are built to the buyer's specs. Michelin, Firestone, Goodyear, all of your favorite brands do this ... and I've seen Kelly Springfield branded tires do very well in some types of tires, as well as sell the same tire with a different name on the sidewall be the identical tire at a lower retail price point. At some times in the distribution cycle, the only way to get a certain size tire from them was to buy it in the private label brand ... and it was the same tire right down to the tread design and tire compound. Same thing for Michelin, Goodyear, et al ... you can get some excellent tires from a private label seller that will perform as well as, if not better, than the branded tires from the same manufacturer.
Generally speaking, I have been disappointed with Chinese manufactured tires ... but I've also been disappointed with English, Belgian, French, Swedish, German, Brazilian, Taiwan and USA tires, too. The one general difference is that I spent less money for the Chinese tire in a given size and quality than the others ....
IMO, the best information you can get about a tire for a given automotive application is to check out the owner's clubs or forums and read their road tests and owner reviews. Keep in mind what they've tested recently will be changed, so it's important to get the most recent test reviews as possible.
The biggest mistake I've seen people make when buying tires is to assume that the tire they're buying today is the same as the tire that they bought last time around for characteristics. What you bought a couple of years ago isn't always the same rubber compound or other details that can affect (for good or bad) the wear/performance/handling of what you previously had. I've been disappointed more than once by all of the major manufactuers/brands .... right down to a personal experience with tires for my AlfaRomeo spyder, where another owner raved about the excellent quiet handling and tire wear (almost none, 65,000 miles on his set) of a given tire; I bought a set of the same tire and they were absolute cra*. Turned my car into an evil handling hard riding noisy POS, to the point where I didn't even enjoy driving it anymore. I had to get those tires off and revert to another brand/type of tire to restore the car's qualities. Expensive loss ....
In 50 years of driving I have had only two blowouts on the highway.
Care to guess which brand?
As far a which tires I buy, I research Tire Rack and buy only tires manufactured in the USA. Not because they are better but because I believe in employing American workers.
I have Goodyear American made tires on one of our cars and they work well and seem to be wearing well and they were priced right.
I had to get some tires for my car after I bought it and couldn't wait for them to be shipped. There's only one tire store (Mavis) anywhere even remotely near me that carries my size (225/45/18 if I remember correctly) in stock and doesn't have to special order them.
They're called Nankang NSII and were only $99 each (most of the others to special order were in the $200 area) so I was pretty apprehensive, but I've been pleasently surprised with them. 30k miles on them now and they've got a ton of tread left.
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