Better Handling On A Budget !

HANKOOK
KINERGY PT H737
90k treadlife warranty, H speed rated, Traction/Temp A/A, and not too heavy.

Buy from America's Tire / Discount Tire Direct, during any one of the many holiday sales they have throughout the year, but be sure to combine with Hankook factory rebates. You won't get a better tire for less money or more value per tire/mile. Despite not being as low RR of true eco tires, you'll never save enough in gas money to make up the difference. These are my go to tire, whenever I need a set.
If you don't have a store local to you, Costco is the best price for install.

I don't think the 205/60 is worth it, though. I have the above tires on my 2016 Golf Sportwagen and it would out-handle a Prius with 205 width tires. The load index is the same also. I just don't see the added width as that much of an upgrade and have to believe it would increase RR (rolling resistance) and aero drag.

(oh, I do have decent data of these tires vs Bridgestone Ecopia, as those were OEM on my GSW - 38.00 mpg over 14k miles so far for the Hankook vs 38.42 for the Ecopia over 46k mi life - the difference is not likely to be statistically significant and definitely not enough to pay for the more expensive Bridgestones with fuel savings)

 

Well you guys convinced me...well at least for our non-Prius vehicle. I ordered the Yokahama Avid Ascent GT's for our Hyundai Elantra GT. We will see how it goes. However, *anything* is better than the absolute crap OEM tires ( Hankook Optimo H426 ). If you look up the hankook H426's on TireRack, they have absolutely horrid ratings...it's a wonder we even survived the winter with those on! Luckily the car wasn't driven much in the winter though since my wife used to work from home. The Ascent Avid GT's literally look orders of magnitude better in all areas.

As for our Prius vehicles, they both have Michelin Defenders on...so probably a while until we have to make another tire decision on those!

Anyway, thanks all for the great discussion here!

 

It just snowed 4" here... plus potential record breaking cold next week. It's too early for this! The Michelin Defenders did great. I'm looking forward to trying the Avid Ascends soon!

 

Yeah...this is a strange year. Usually SE Minnesota is warmer than northern Minnesota ( MN is a big state ). However, in theory it is supposed to warm up long term. Many of us here got caught off guard and didn't even finish our Fall yard work yet ( because the trees had not dropped all their leaves yet )!

Interesting. I looked up the TireRack chart on the Michelin Defenders again and the snow rating is much lower now than when we got them ( it was in the high 8's ). One thing I have noticed is that the chart scores (especially snow rating) on many tires tend to lower as the "miles reported" number goes up....and the Defenders have over 12,000,000 miles reported. The Avid Ascend GT's only have 439,000 miles reported. It will be interesting to see what happens as the reports come in over time.

 

I still love the Yokohama Avid Ascend GTs I got in early May. Fantastic rain tires. Almost 14k miles on them so far. I'm guessing you've had some more serious snow now, @farmecologist. Did you get to try out the Yokos?

 

I have them...but they are not on the 2013 Elantra GT yet. I had a silly series of events with Amazon regarding the tires :

• Bought the tires at what was a good price at the time...Amazon had the best price (and free returns..which is key).
• Tires arrived. Checked on Amazon and the price had dropped substantially.
• Called Amazon to get a credit for the difference. Customer service claimed they could not give me a credit due to 'policy'. I mentioned that the current set had free returns and it would be a win win to give me the credit. No dice.
• I had them set up a free return ( kind of a hassle ).
• Placed a new order for the same tires at the greatly reduced price.
• Received the new tires. And the return of the old ones just completed.

Pretty silly...eh? Seems like Amazon lost money on this deal. Really silly that they didn't give me the credit for the difference!

Now I need to get them installed. Apparently Costco will NOT install tires purchased via a third party anymore ( they used to way back when ). I have a local shop that will do it though...just need to get it set up.

The Michelin Defenders on our 2013 v (wagon) got a workout over the thanksgiving weekend though. I had to drive our daughter to college and back...in the middle of a freeing rain storm. Kudos to the road crews...they fought the freezing rain very well but there were still quite a few stretches that were really icy (as in hardly any brake response ).

 

Cool thread. I was searching for something else, but I'm glad I came across it. However, I think the TireRack "Ratings Charts and Reviews" from other customers might not be something to really use as a deciding factor. They are certainly worth looking at, but they seem to misrepresent the tires. I don't mean that the reviewers might not be trustworthy, but rather the way the site chooses to attribute the ratings to the tires they are listed under seems to lack specificity.

I went to TireRack to check the tires discussed in this thread and noticed that "Ratings Charts and Reviews" for the tires listed are the same across a model, even if the size or other specs differ (e.g. treadwear, serv. desc.). That is to say, the stats and reviews for the AVID GT 205/60R15 are the same for the AVID GT 195/65R15, AVID GT 195/60R15, and the AVID GT 185/65R15. It's even true for the AVID GT 245/40R19, a tire radically different in all dimensions.

This same chart sharing occurs for the Defenders, the Premier A/S, and I assume all other tires on the site that are of the same name but differently sized in any given aspect. It's slightly more confusing for the Ecopia 422 plus as there are 4 different versions in the same size for that tire @195/65R15, for example. In this case, the 640 and 540 treadwear share the same "Ratings Charts and Reviews" while the two 600 treadwear options share a different set.

Obviously, these tires would all perform at least somewhat differently given the differences in aspect ratio, sidewall height, contact patch area, width, and other factors. As I understand it, a thinner tire will maintain better road contact/traction in snowy conditions, in dry conditions a wider tire may handle more capably, different diameter tires will likely have different treadwear performance, and so on.

So, I would take their ratings more on a spectrum basis than on an individual basis.

As an aside, how sloppy do you think it would it get if I put some 155/80R15 on an '08 prius?