Question Any tire experts - Name brand or NTB tires?

ProudMommysince09 · Jun 21, 2011

The tires on my Ford Explorer will need to be replaced soon, in about 2 to 3 mos. I went to get a quote from NTB today and the same tires
that I put on it about 4 yrs ago, Michelin brand, went up in price by about $300. They are now about $1100..
Now I haven't done any shopping around yet,
but they also gave me a quote for their brand tires, Cooper, which would save me $500. Has anyone heard of them/ experience?
Im hesitant and leaning more to the Michelins because supposedly those are the best tires for this vehicle. They also lasted me about 60K miles,
which seems pretty good to me. If this other brand won't last that long then I won't save much.

I'm only debating this because some other maintenance had to be done today ($650), and the hubs need to be replaced before the tires in the next couple of weeks ($750).

Edit to add: Another decision factor might be that my car has 155k miles on it and I was saving for a newer vehicle, until this and some other expenses ate up most of it.

SafeDad · Jun 21, 2011

Tire prices have definitely increased in the last couple years.

Cooper is a legitimate independent brand name, unless NTB bought the name recently or something. Like all brands, they sell a range of tires from top quality to mediocre with prices to match.

Outside of Consumer Reports and www.tirerack.com, there isn't a lot of comparative information on tires. For example, Consumer Reports gave a good rating to the Cooper GFE series car tire and Discoverer CTS truck tire. I would generally say to avoid the low priced generic brands in favor of a mid grade or high end tire from a major brand. Michelin, Goodyear, General, Kumho, Continental, Pirelli, Bridgestone/Firestone, Toyo, Yokohama, Cooper, etc.

An Aurora · Jun 21, 2011

I'm far from a tire expert, but we have Nokian all-season tires on our Explorer right now. They have been going for about 45K miles right now and are in good shape, but this fall/winter we will replace them with Hakkepeliittas because they didn't really give us enough traction last winter.

I have Hankook tires on my car currently, and I like them. They did great all winter. My last car had Hankook run flats and we replaced those ASAP since they are horrible. We put Riken Trail AP tires on them, no idea how they are because we only had the tires for about a month before the car was totaled.