A visit to a new-car showroom makes it clear that car shoppers pay much more attention to a car’s color, mileage rating and sound system than they do to the tires.
Consumers often make a broad presumption about new-car tires: that the automakers picked tires that will be reasonably safe and wear reasonably well. Carmakers do work closely with tire companies to find suitable tires and generally come up with models that perform reasonably well.
But all tires do not provide equal braking and cornering performance, and consumers can do better than accept the factory-issue equipment. Most automakers offer handling packages that include larger tires and wheels, thicker anti-sway bars and stiffer shock absorbers.
But car shoppers can avoid paying for a package while adding tires to the list of items they scrutinize and bargain to upgrade.
“It’s a real pain” to deal with such requests, said Bob Marino, sales manager at White Plains Hyundai Dodge, because dealers cannot always obtain credit for the tires they remove from a new car. The only requests Marino has had for different tires involved some buyers of high-performance cars or people who wanted “visual things, like raised white letters,” he said.
Even if the dealer is reluctant to substitute, car buyers can find ways to trade up. “A lot of car dealers have associations with tire dealers to satisfy customer requests,” said Sue Zajac, a spokeswoman for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.
In addition, she said, many Goodyear tire stores will negotiate a “new-car changeover” for the owner of any vehicle that has been driven fewer than 500 miles, regardless of the make of the original tire. In many cases, she said, the tire dealers offer full credit for the tires they remove.
A spokesman for Bridgestone/Firestone Inc., said it had no comparable program.
As a last resort, a buyer determined to get the best tires available for a car could pay for them and store the original tires to put back on the car when it came time to sell it.
What does a better tire provide? Improved traction for cornering and braking. Usually this comes at the expense of tread wear, because tires made of softer compounds grip the road better but also wear out faster.
In its annual tire tests, Consumer Reports reported in its February issue that Goodyear’s Aquatread tire, which finished first in the magazine’s ratings for the second consecutive year, provided excellent braking on wet pavement and very good braking on dry roads, and Goodyear’s Invicta GS, standard on many new cars, finished ninth, with a rating of fair on wet and dry surfaces.
Yet the Aquatread and the Invicta GS are comparably priced, as is the tire rated second by Consumer Reports, the Bridgestone Turanza S.
