I'm up for new tires on my 13 CX-5 and I can get Ohtsu FP-7000's for a very good price w/coupon from Pep Boys (only buying tires there. Tires will be put on by dealer I work at.). I know these are made by Falken/Sumitomo. Anybody have any experience with these? This would be in 225/65/17 size.
I put a set of Ohtsu's on my Prelude five months ago. The price was great (thanks Discount Tire Direct) and I was already familiar with the brand and its' quality. I saved a lot of money when comparing them to the "no-name" brands offered by the local dealer.
Go for it! There is absolutely nothing wrong in being associated with Falken/Sumitomo.
Tires are such a critical component of how a car drives than it doesn’t seem worth it to cheap out by $100 on the critical connection between your car and the road. Tires are like shocks, I have never ever regretted spending more for the better option, whether it be Koni, Continental, etc. There are places to try to be frugal, and then there are tires and shocks, that you feel constantly. Sure, you don’t need need double adjustable Penskes or Hoosiers on your mom-mobile , but you’re everyday drive will be better with a quality tire than with a lowest Chinese bidder tire
I don't know about Ohtsu but I've come to like cheaper tires more and more. My BMW has Federal and Sailun tires on it. We've run our Lemons car on Sigma tires and Nankang tires. As of yet, the only tires I've really not liked were the most expensive, Michelin Pilot Sport 2s and I didn't buy them.
My mom has those on her Volvo. I think but can't quite remember that we put those on our Zq8 S10 as well. They are definitely the same tread mold, but i dont remember if they are labeled Ohtsu fp7000. Either way, no real complaints.
I'm guilty of cheap tires on commuter cars. I'd go on Tire Rack and sort the search of tire size by cheapest price, then from there start looking for highest treadwear and/or lots of positive reviews. I don't know if the review system is biased but I think I've had decent luck in the past that way. You can try slightly different tire sizes to see if that helps the selection. I figure that for a true boring commuter car, my absolute need for traction isn't very high and I'd prefer the hardest longest lasting tires I can get or really the most cost effective ones. Combine that with my made up reasoning that in order to legally be sold any tire must be deemed "safe" by the DOT and the cheap ones don't seem so bad. However I believe there are value, brand name, good cheap tires, quite different from the off brand unheard of tires you might get at a local shop. Super high performance rubber is a luxury item, but for commodity rubber for transportation, I'm a pretty firm believer in the lowest common denominator/supplier/bidder/etc.
I'm a solid believer in never cheaping out on tires. No need to spend a fortune, but stay away from the cheap off-brand all season stuff. There are plenty of tires that are still reasonably cheap and are known to perform well.
I've had 2 distinct incidents I can think of where a whole bunch of stupid happened around or in front of me and DD-ing on sticky-ish tires was just enough to keep me out of it (due to available traction to slow down and change direction). If I'd been on all seasons (especially cheap ones) or in one case had put my snows on a few weeks earlier, I would have ended up in an accident instead of just with a slight brown spot in my pants.
I'm guilty of cheap tires. The worst experience I've ever had with a set of tires was with Michelins followed closely by Firestone. I'm currently running Sumitomos on my work truck and the P71 with 0 complaints. They were substantially cheaper than any premium brand tire and have preformed flawlessly.
I've only cheaped out on tires once. And that was for GT Champiro UHPs.
One of the best tires I've had, similar to continental DW in my opinion and stupid cheap. Too bad they are NLA.
Since then I've gotten lucky catching things like DWS and DW on clearance as they switched to new models. Even though the Chinese experience was good, I'll take a premium brand at the same price all day.
I have mounted maybe 20 sets without issues and they seem to do well for used car customers. Have you looked at Fusions? Not bad for a cheap tire.
Paul
I was running potenza s04's on the e46 as a DD and as long as it was warm and dry they were amazing. The speed6 has continentals on it and they seem nice enough. I don't really have a lot of experience with owning cheap tires myself but working at a tire shop for 3.5 years I will say that 99% of the sidewall bubbles I saw were on cheap tires.
I decided against the Ohtsu's. I wasn't convinced by the reviews I read on them.
I am most likely going with these:
https://simpletire.com/radar-225-65r17-dsc0256-tires
If I go cheap, I go to the local big tire place, in my case, Tireland USA. Last time I went I picked the cheapest option with a 2 ply sidewall, a Hemisphere, not bad. Otherwise I’ve been running Cooper CS5s for non winters for the last 4 years. From DTD they run about $100/each in 205/xx/16, although tire rack now carries Cooper as well.
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