I used to buy tires from TireRack - now SimpleTire (how can they do it?)

On Sun, 2 Apr 2017 21:56:54 -0600, rbowman > wrote:

> On 04/02/2017 07:27 PM, Jonas Schneider wrote:
>> Auurgh! Tire reviews.
>> Tire reviews are like people rating their mother's cooking.
>> Everyone is biased toward the tires *they* selected, while some can't stand
>> their mother, no matter what.
>
> Then you might as well blindfold yourself and throw darts at the wall.

No no no.
All is not lost.

We don't have perfect information.
But we do have good information.

What you do is read the sidewall.

The sidewall of every passenger car tire sold in the USA contains a wealth
of information about the construction of the tire, the wet and dry traction
of the tire, and the treadwear expectancy of that exact tire.

Do I wish we had the factory datasheets?
Sure.

> I doubt the Motor Trend writer is paying for many tires out of his own
> pocket. Possibly he's getting paid under the table by Cooper but is that
> worth slagging a couple of other brands that he found inferior?

We all know that these magazines are "entertainment".
Even the network news is "entertainment".
Hell ... our own President is sheer entertainment!

There's nothing wrong with reading that magazine, or any magazine (heck, I
used Playboy as my anatomy reference for years in my early days!).

There's nothing wrong with reading the magazine.
But let's be realistic.

That wasn't a "tire review".
It was a shill for the Cooper tire marketing guys.

Nothing wrong with that - it's entertainment (which is why they brought
Unser in driving a Corvette since it had nothing whatsoever to do with
rating the passenger car tires).

My point is that you're never going to find anything better for *all*
tires, than the sidewall of *every* tire.

Sure, you can get a factory datasheet of one or two tires, but you'll never
get that detailed information for all the tires you are considering.

> The must have bought the topspeed author a few beers too:
> http://www.topspeed.com/cars/cooper-...-ar163761.html

Notice the content of the first sentences of that article by Christian Moe?
It's essentially the exact same first and last sentences of the MT article
by Jason Udy.

They both ran through the same tests at the same track at the same time
using the same cars using the same tires?

The article says a dozen journalists were handed this "opportunity".
So it's not surprising that two different journalists wrote stories based
on their sanctioned "business trip" (for that is what it was).

> But, like the guy said, buying tires is boring. Not sucking completely
> is the main criteria.

Those articles were lock stock and barrel orchestrated from start to finish
by the Cooper Marketing Team.

There's nothing wrong with reading that article.
* All I'm saying is that the article was entertainment.
* I'm saying the article was run by Cooper Marketing.
* I'm saying the journalists were given an opportunity to write a "story".
* And they were certainly fed the exact same marketing blurbs.

I'm saying they reported exactly zero measurements.
* They didn't even report the lap times.
* And their 'tests' had no controls whatsoever (not even a placebo).

Clearly - it's entertainment and not science.
More to the point - it's MARKETING and not science.

Nothing wrong with that.
But, the blanket statements that Cooper beats Pirelli and Hancook are not
supported by anything in the articles.

I'm not saying Cooper isn't better, nor that Pirelli and Hancook are
anythign special to beat - all I'm saying is that the articles were pure
Cooper marketing and magazine entertainment.

They were not tire reviews.

>>> > I did not chose the OEM tires, Bridgestone Potenza 92E's.
>> You probably do what most people do, including me.
>> The market research I quoted said that most people choose OE tires early in
>> the life of the vehicle, where they stray further and further away as the
>> vehicle ages.
>
> The Bridgestones on the first Yaris were worn and I planned to replace
> them in the spring with some other brand. However, the Yaris did not
> survive a head on collision with a snow plow.

Yikes. I hope everyone was ok.

> The second Yaris came with
> the same tires, which I replaced with Coopers when they wore out. The
> 92E's are not bad for ride quality, noise, and traction but the tread
> life sucks and they're quite expensive when you're not Toyota buying
> them by the boatload.

The problem here is that most of us (all of us?) trust our own experience
far more than we trust others' experience.

That's human nature.