Tires SUMITOMO or OEM FORD

I'll add my first two years of ownership review. The past two years the Maverick has hauled everything I've needed without issues.

I just put the conti viking contacts back on the s5 last week, and I need to get some winter tires for the sq5, I think I'm going with the sumitomo ice edge as we had them with the old a4 and they went through anything. I'll probably put them back on the s5 next year. We're in NH and go up north all lot for riding, plus we get decent snow and they're great for the $. Then it's wheel shopping for the sq5 for next year! It's so nice and easy to swap out winter/ summer wheels and tires.

I got around well with Summos in the winter on my Mazda 2

What's your goal? To become a professional driver (regardless of it being profitable or not)? to find a new fun way to burn money? To live out a dream of driving a car you maybe can't afford on track? I did the drive an exotic before i had a car that was worth taking on track. It was a blast. I have more fun doing hpde now where I get significantly more track time (and get stuck with the cost of tires and rotors and brake pads and fixing things that break and trying to chase gremlins) . While the idea of racing is appealing the cost of racing is not but if that was a goal progressing towards a license and avoiding picking up any bad habits is your best bet.

I have Sumitomo Encounter ATs that I like pretty well. On road manners are great and no complaints off-road. They don't look as "cool" as some of the other ATs but they work just as well.

Rotating tires, system checks, and topping off the windshield fluid.

One set of tires is my only out of pocket maintenance expense.

For $70 I can buy Japanese made Sumitomos which have perfectly adequate grip in most conditions and long life, but they are quite loud due to the aggressive tread.

I found comparable value with the stock sumitomo tires the came with.

Im a tech who has installed these (customer requested) and had them on one of my cars a few years ago. The only good points about them were the tread wear and the affordable cost. They have a VERY hard compound which means they lose traction easy. I was told by a customer, as well as my experience, that they spun very easily on wet surfaces and were terrible in the snow. They were also noisy at highway speeds. I do NOT recommend them and dont sell them unless requested.