Tire Comparisons (for R14)
 

Thought I'd both ask the community what tires you all recommend and also share some results of my own research...

I have a 1998 Civic DX hatch which will need new tires rather soon (spec'd for 185/65R14). So I began looking for what tires offered the best balance of price, fuel economy, handling, and tread life. I know that optimizations for any one of those factors tend to work against the other factors, so apparently I'm looking for some physics-defying super tire, heh.

Anyway, after preliminary research, my top pick was the Michelin Defender. Although relatively expensive up front, it's a low resistance tire that reviews say still has good handling and has a high tread wear rating and long warranty, which all helps to offset the higher up-front cost.

However, I did some more research and looked at more tests on Tire Rack, and noticed another tire that is probably an even better deal... the General Altimax RT43. Based on the Tire Rack test results and my own calculations, it offers a better price/performance ratio in basically every category when compared to the Defender. Most surprisingly, it even beat it at the MPG rating (although not by enough to really say it's outside the margin of error).

So at this point I'm leaning towards the Altimax tires.

Another less quantifiable point that still worth considering... since the Defenders last longer, there's a greater chance of having one of them damaged (nail, etc) during the lifetime of the tire, so in that sense there's more risk of wasted value with them vs a quicker wearing tire that is cheaper (like the Altimax).

Below is a link to the sheet I made to compare them. I'm open to any comments or suggestions on my research and the tires I've looked at, as well as suggestions for other tires to consider.

Tire Comparison Sheet (Google Drive)

not sure how much freeway driving you do, but if it's 40%+ think about going up 1 tire size.

I don't know why the last four columns are in X/$. I personally look at the absolute values and compare those. Otherwise, the comparison is good, and it would be your choice. Highway miles or city miles might be the final factor in choice.

Good thought. Now, I plan to swap to a VX transmission in the near future and with that I'm pretty sure the increase in tire size would be unnecessary. However, if I didn't swap to a taller transmission then that would definitely be a serious consideration.

Not sure if it was apparent, but I had multiple sheets/tabs in that spreadsheet, one of which had the raw data. Given that I had the raw data on one sheet already, I used the main one to look at performance vs price (X/$) for a number of factors; this way I could see the relative value that each tire had and focus the tire comparison on which ones offered better value.

I bought a set of defenders a couple years ago, at the time I couldn't find anything on the altimax's rolling resistance. Had I known they were competitive in that respect, I can't see how I could have justified the more expensive defenders

Well, I'll throw a point out there... I don't necessarily have a good rolling resistance figure for the Altimax tires... rather I just compared the MPG readings that Tire Rack got in their testing. They did use the same car (2014 BMW 328i) in all the tests, but other factors could still hurt the consistency (consider thatsome of the tires were in tests conducted at different times, so different weather, different condition of car, etc).

I've also heard that LRR tires actually get better once they wear down some, so it could also tip more in favor of the Defenders once they are broken in well. (Does any one have some figures for how much fuel economy should improve after this?)

Still, I'm willing to bet that since the Altimax also compared well to other tires that were in the same tests then it's probably still a good bet. The data from Tire Rack is the most complete and (relatively) consistent I've found yet, so I still think it's a pretty fair comparison.

I would also look at the michelin energysaver tires. It has decent to good handling. En good to perfect handling on the wet. In our summertires test here in the netherlands i came in place 5 against normal/performance tires. And have good milage. I have them on my ford ka. Have driven 50.000 kilometer on them and stil more than 6mm tread. Also nice and stable handling in the corners

I run Michelin Defender 175/65/R14 on my 05 Insight, on my 30 mile one way commute for the last 3 years (98% highway) these are my typical numbers.

46 MPG @ (75-85 mph)
54 MPG @ (65-75 mph)
58 MPG @ (55-65 mph)

Inflated to 40 psi