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Selecting the right tires to buy for your vehicle is an important decision. Your safety, as well as driving enjoyment over the next years and thousands of miles will be determined by which tires you buy. The information provided on this website and the tips from our auto experts will ensure you buy tires that match your vehicle.

Since tires affect the personality and performance of your vehicle, all four tires should be as identical as possible or handling problems may arise. If you buy tires that don't match, it is possible that one end of your vehicle won't respond as quickly or completely as the other, making it more difficult to control.

What are the best tires to buy? Not an easy question. Take a look at any consumer-oriented organization that actually tracks this stuff, and few clear patterns can be spelled out. In chronological order, these are the tire brands that won the last 14 Consumer Reports tests: Pirelli, Bridgestone, BF Goodrich, Dayton, Toyo, Michelin, Pirelli, Firestone, Uniroyal, Goodyear, Kumho, Dunlop, Falken, Goodyear. J.D. Power shows Pirelli topping consumer satisfaction in original-equipment tires and Michelin topping satisfaction. The majority of brands (and there are many) were inconsistent, scoring above-average in one test and below-average in others. Along with Goodyear, Michelin is known to have premium tire pricing – no surprise, considering that Michelin also scored highest in perceived quality among consumers. Searching Epinions.com turned out somewhat different results. In descending order, the average score out of five stars was as follows:

Michelin and Pirelli are still on the high side to buy tires, but Kumho seemingly has no business as the second-best out of 16 when J.D. Power’s study showed it second-worst out of 13. Firestone is rock-bottom to buy tires, but severe bias is a likely factor, especially considering that Bridgestone (Firestone’s owner) sits as king atop the hill. Overall, it seems that Michelin and Pirelli are the only ones that never show any major weaknesses. Between the two, Pirelli seems to offer more rubber for the dollar.

Why is it that the price of fuel for our vehicle seems relatively inexpensive while the cost to buy tires seems high? If we keep track of our total costs we will find that typical total fuel costs for just 10 to 20 thousand miles of driving actually exceed costs to buy car tires. And believe us, we've found that the quality and performance of our tires has a lot more to do with our driving satisfaction than our fuel does.

When you are shopping for tires to buy and find one that is perfect, although more expensive than another tire that appears to be a close second; consider evaluating your situation by comparing "how much per mile" each tire will cost. If you plan to drive your vehicle another 30,000 miles and are considering the "perfect" tires at $100 each, and the other at $90 each; you may be surprised to find out that the cost of the "perfect" set costs just 1.3¢ per mile...while the close set costs 1.2¢ per mile. Will saving the $40 today make up for not having selected the "perfect" tire that you will be driving on for the next two years?

Buying Tires