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It's still a little too wet in NorCal for a dedicated dry weather tire so I'm going to try a set of the Kumho Ecsta PS91's for a few months. It's a "Max Performance Summer" and it's a Kumho so the pricing is really competitive. I certainly won't feel guilty about abusing the rear tires. I searched and nobody has posted a thing about this tire yet so hopefully those of us looking for an inexpensive alternative to the P Zero, Pilot SS or Continentals will have something new to consider...or maybe not. We'll see. Lots of 18" and 19" options too. BTW does that tread pattern look suspiciously familiar to anyone else?
Yeah when they first came out I thought they looked exactly like PSS tread. And they even called them "PSxx"! I've heard good things about them. I'm curious about them as well.
I am running them on my C63. For about 70% of the cost of PSS, you are getting a decent performance tire. They have excellent wet straightline grip, decent sidewalls, and they are pretty quiet. In the dry, traction is decent, but not exceptional (but I am not sure what expectations are in this tire segment). Lateral grip is sufficient, but I haven't found max grip with these tires.
The only complaint is that my set didn't balance as well as I would like, but this is a small annoyance. Tread depth starts out at about 9/32 contrary to what I read online (7 or 8/32). PSS starts at 10/32.
I've put about 1500 miles on these new Kumho tires so far and have been pretty darn happy. To be fair, my stockers were pretty bad. They'd only seen about 8K miles in 3 years and, I dunno, but it feels like maybe they'd dried out a little over time - if that's even possible. Their performance definitely didn't match the level of visual wear. In any event these new tires instantly transformed the car from a tail happy, albeit extremely fun, biggish feeling sedan to a more composed and tossable canyon carver. I'm really enjoying them. Maybe a little too much. The weather is warming here and I'm already thinking about a dedicated summer tire. A pair of these in 275 is about $300 a set so it's certainly a great value though.
Here's what I like about these tires so far...
sticky - very little tire spin at low speeds now and my garage still smells like fresh rubber every morning
quiet - freeway driving has been improved dramatically
wet performance - these are the perfect El Niņo tires for Californians
value - if they see 75% of the miles I'm expecting I'll be hitting a homerun
The list of what I don't like is a lot smaller. The rear sidewalls are interesting. On occasion they have betrayed the car before the contact patch has even starting losing traction. I'm running 275's on stock 9" wheels too though so I can't pretend to be totally shocked. The other odd thing is the morning flat spots. These tires are so soft that each morning there's a flat spot on each tire that takes a mile or two to disappear. Mildly irritating but nothing major. All in all these have been a great alternative to some of the higher priced alternatives IMHO.
03-11-2017, 02:20 PM
