Tires Kumho or Vredestein

Wife had a set of Continentals on her GLE 350 and two rears had belt issue so had to replace and the same Conti’s were not available. We went with two Kumho Ecsta and they are solid.

I put a set on my 2006 Ram. LT, and I think the total was about $450. No problems, better ride than what I had.

Underated brand. I just went through my first set of v730s. I'll be buying them again this spring.

My mini cooper (FWD like your Prius) is a beast in the snow with winter tires. WINTER tires, not just all seasons.

Stick with your Vredesteins. I live in the Great White North and swear by the quatrac's. You're not going to find a better value tire.

if you just need tires for street use and not break the bank, vredestein quatrac are the best all season tires i've ever ran (94'). and they worked great when i lived in Oregon and handled snow pretty well for what it was.

I'm not a huge fan of Kumho in recent years but they're OK.

Anyway, for what it is worth, I tried the 275/35ZR-21 Vredestein Ultrac Vorti+ XL both on and off track earlier this year. It is still a summer performance tire. Off track, I was seeing slightly improved efficiency over the factory P Zero, but the Ultras were slightly noisy on rougher roads (no foam inserts); on the track, for the first couple of laps, they were decent (plenty good enough for spirited driving), but driving to the max lap after lap they got squirrely and very vocal.

I wore out a set of Kumho Ecsta 712's on my Miata in about 7.5K miles. Of course I was sliding the rears using the throttle to steer around curves on Highway 9 in California.

Tires (Kumho Ecsta LX Platinum) were installed 6/25/2024 @ 151,xxx miles (with receipts). Manufactured date is May 2023. Currently, car has 165,xxx miles. As you can see, the two front (now rotated to rear) tires are bald! The other two tires have a normal amount of tread remaining however. I was running about 1° of camber front and rear, and explains why the inside is more worn, but doesn't explain the overall accelerated wear that occurred only on the fronts. I also have an alignment report showing only the front left Toe is out of spec (-0.39° measured vs. +/-0.08 spec).

In my opinion, this would fall under the warranty via excessive/premature tire wear, but of course I imagine any shop would fuss about the lack of rotation. To make matters worse, I purchased and installed these tires at Walmart, which I'm now learning isn't an authorized Kumho installer and Kumho's warranty form says they must be installed by an authorized installer. However, Walmart's own listing for the tires says it's covered by a 50k mile tread life warranty (see last photo).