Tires Continental or RIKEN

Same. Went from Pirelli P7 All Season Plus to Continental Control Contact SRS+ and basically paid $900 for everything including installation.

Within a couple weeks I tossed the summers and had Discount Tire install Continental DWS 6+ tires. I haven’t looked back since. I have over 27k miles on them. Lots of tread left (rotate every 5k). Upper mid west roads.

Granted, I went from Yokohamas to Continentals, but the increases are huge.

I have ExtremeContact DWS06 Plus by Continental. They are quiet, smooth, and amazing in the rain. Really happy with them.

10x better than the continentals in snow.

I got new tires for my mk7 Jetta gli yesterday at Discount Tires. Continental dws06plus, 225/45/18, or whatever stock size is. Great tires. Holy cow, these tires make the car drive that much better.

Rikens are fine. They're quite a soft tyre, probably because like you said Michelin make them butbthat does meant the grip is decent.

My favorite tire for the typical forester/outback suburb crowd I see at work is still the Continental contiprocontact series. Decent wear, decent performance, easy to install, easy to patch, balance is usually good.

I test drove the R4P on a warm day. The tires were squeaky as heck. The compound is super hard. When I get my R4P, I'm gonna run the stock tires until they wear out.

My gp4000's popped CONSTANTLY. Got a hole in the sidewalls in less than 500 miles.