Tires MICHELIN or Pirelli

Defenders are top of the line. Yokohama is good but usually slightly stiffer/harder tread compounds. Michelins are designed to be safe from the second you put them on till about 2/32 of tread or 4-5 years when the rubber dries out. If you drive a lot and value quality and safety Michelin is king.

Check out the Michelin Wild Enduro tires. Much cheaper than Maxxis, but, in my opinion, as good or even better

Pirelli Pzeros are really high quality tires which are way better than Nitto.

I went with pirelli cinturato p7 all season plus on my tdi, love them, do well in rain shine and light snow.. the 70k mile warranty on them too, all around good tire imo at a decent price

Im on my 2nd set of Michelin Premier A/S and I really like them on both my 14 Jetta TDI and my parents 15 Passat TDI. Its a decent budget Michelin that is good for about 50k miles.

I live in MN and switched out OEM ecopias on my '17 Mazda to some michelin cross climate+'s and absolutely love them! Drove thru a blizzard with them and thing handled beautifully on unplowed roads!

Yeah the factory Pirelli tires are hot garage. I got new wheels and went Michelin PS4S and the difference in noise was huge. It was strange on the first highway trip, I though they just had a different sound, but it turned out the noise I was hearing was wind noise over the side mirrors that the Pirellis completely masked.

I put the car version of these on our Corolla last year before we sent it to our kid in CT last fall -- they said the car was great all winter, plus you can use them all year 'round. They just called us after someone blew a stop sign and pulled right out in front of them and said the car was able to stop so hard that everything flew into the dashboard which is the opposite of the Continental LRR tires that came on it where the ABS would just click uselessly on dry pavement. I didn't get to drive on them very much before we shipped the car up there, but they feel like a regular all-season tire, not a squirmy snow tire. I did pay $10 extra to get the V-rated version for a little extra stiffness.

I'm currently running Michelin Premieres on my Jetta. They are great tires, especially in the wet, but don't get near the longevity that they claim. I've put TrueContacts on our old Forester, and was very happy with them. I've also had General Altimax HP's on the Jetta (same category tire), and was happy with those as well. Generals are a great budget tire. They were very quiet, and I'll echo the comment that they feel squirmy at first until all the casing oil gets out of them.

All weathers weren't worth it in my case, I'm not hard on my tires at all and I logged 35-45k On the ones I bought last year and they are already at 2/32'nds. I went back to all seasons this year, due to I'd rather get the 80,000km's with the Michelins I bought. Nor did I really notice a difference in traction/handling between All Weathers and All Seasons.