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Hercules was founded in 1950 and essentially sold rebadged Cooper tires. This arrangement conitnued until 2004 and they now exclusively source their tires from a 3rd party Chinese manufacturer and not Cooper.
Doral is owned by Treadways Corporation which is a subsidiary of Sumitomo. Most of the Sumitomo (including Dunlop) and Doral tires in North America are actually produced by Goodyear in US plants.
They are both basically dirt cheap tires and the only reason to look at them is that you want dirt cheap tires and don't really care about anything else. I have only anecdotal experience with these brands, but I would personally pick Doral given that it is a subbrand of a major company and not a tiny private brand selling God knows what imported from China. I do have experience with tire brands like Hercules, such as Pegasus which is another China off-label import and they are very poor performing tires.
This is tough because I've been reading better things about Hercules overall.
A lot of people post reviews on tires when they first get them, or within the first couple months of owning them. This is obviously not enough time for a review. What I care about (and you should too) isn't how the tire performs TODAY, but how well it will perform and hold up a year or two down the road. In this case, my experience with these off-brand China sourced tires has been universally poor. A lot of excessive checking (cracking), blowouts, sidewall failures and dry rotting all within a year or two.
This isn't just about the tires being made in China. A lot of tires are made in China, however, a Michelin or Goodyear made in China is very different than an offbrand tire from a random manufacturer. Here is the website for Quingdao Rubber Company that makes quite a few offbrand US tires:
Golden Pegasus Group are one of the large-sized enterprises in China tire manufac -turing industry, comprising Qingdao Pegasus Rubber Company Limited and Qingdao Gold -en Pegasus Industrial Trading Company Limited, specialize in producing passenger car tir -e, light truck tire, radial truck tire, light-truck tires, OTR tires.
By adopting advanced international technology of radial tires, the company imported main equipments with fir -st class quality and good credit. The project has so many advant -ages such as the concentration of production sca -le, advanced technical plant, the produc -t marketplace looks to increase widely.
We has passed ISO9001: 2000 quality system Certificate and the products have pas -sed China Compulsory C -ertification (CCC), American DOT certification and European EC -E quality certification.
Read the above, is this who you want making your tires? Um, yes I'd like the chicken and brocoli combo with fried rice and a side of "class quality and good credit passenger car tir -e".
The other major issue is that Hercules does not have a firm dealer network. The tires are basically carried at the whim of the local store that decides to stock them. They could be a Hercules "dealer" today and not tomorrow. At least with Doral you are dealing with the subbrand of a major tire and distribution company with a firm dealer network.
Out of curiosity, what are you looking to put tires on, what do you need the tires to do and what is your budget?
Kelly Tires is a wholly owned subsidiary brand of Goodyear. They are generally considered "good" cheap tires. Tires like Kelly's or Doral's are generally made from old tread designs of the parent company, using cheaper compounds. You are basically buying a 5 year old tire design. No, it won't perform like the modern "namebrand" one, but it isn't necessarily bad either.
Overall, the Charger GT is a decent all-season performance tire. There are definitely "better" options out there, but not until you are spending $100 a tire or so. I personally wouldn't turn my nose up at them if I needed to buy a decent tire and cost was my main factor.
Something to think about is that the snow capability of all-season tires (at least in my experience) is heavily dependent on tread depth. When new or near new they work OK. Once the tread is about half gone, say down to 4 or 5 32nds, they are not good at all in snow.
If you can do it, get 4 more wheels, steel wheels are fine even if you are running some sort of mag on the car for the summer or all-weather tires, and put yourself a set of real snow tires on them.
Good tires are cheap, compared to even a minor slide off the road type of wreck, even if no one else is involved. Money is tight all over, everyone wants a bargain, but a truly crap cheap tire will cost you more than it's worth over time.
Kelly Tires is a wholly owned subsidiary brand of Goodyear. They are generally considered "good" cheap tires. Tires like Kelly's or Doral's are generally made from old tread designs of the parent company, using cheaper compounds. You are basically buying a 5 year old tire design. No, it won't perform like the modern "namebrand" one, but it isn't necessarily bad either.
Overall, the Charger GT is a decent all-season performance tire. There are definitely "better" options out there, but not until you are spending $100 a tire or so. I personally wouldn't turn my nose up at them if I needed to buy a decent tire and cost was my main factor.
Well good because that's what i've already decided to go with. At least i've heard of that brand. Also, she asked me specifically the type of driving I typically do - something the other service places didn't ask me. I explained how far my drive to work is and the places I typically drive to that are out of town. Based on that, plus my budget, that's what she recommended.
Something to think about is that the snow capability of all-season tires (at least in my experience) is heavily dependent on tread depth. When new or near new they work OK. Once the tread is about half gone, say down to 4 or 5 32nds, they are not good at all in snow.
If you can do it, get 4 more wheels, steel wheels are fine even if you are running some sort of mag on the car for the summer or all-weather tires, and put yourself a set of real snow tires on them.
Good tires are cheap, compared to even a minor slide off the road type of wreck, even if no one else is involved. Money is tight all over, everyone wants a bargain, but a truly crap cheap tire will cost you more than it's worth over time.
The tires I'm replacing have needed replacing since probably last winter, honestly, and they did fine then. Besides, they plow snow well around here. I have no worries about that.
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