Hamdogii

After spending the whole afternoon on the phone with variousdealerships, MB Financial, and finally MB USA themselves, I learned that uponlease turn in, your car MUST have Goodyear run-flat tires with tread more than1/8”.

A quick search will find that Goodyear actually makes thesame tire in a non-run flat tire that starts about $150 (or cheaper dependingon brand) at some online tire distributors. The “run flat” tires start about $300 ($500 at the dealer).

We can all see the obvious difference. I am going to dismount all the run flat tiresand install the Goodyear non-run flat tires and run those for the leaseduration rather than getting charged $2000 upon lease turn in. With these Goodyear tires only lasting about20k miles, you should be considering the long term. I did talk to some dealers and the salesperson said “as long as the tread is good you will be OK”! I called dealers in Dallas, Cincinnati,Minneapolis, Los Angeles and three different people at corporate. However the next office said the exactopposite and the original run-flat tires must be installed because the vehicledoes not come with a spare. Either waythe answer was inconsistent and before talking to one of the supervisors atcorporate (800-367-6372 opt.4 then opt.5) and got me to thinking this isexactly how they generate revenue on the back end of lease deals.

Rarely does someone change their own tire these days so theidea of a run flat tire is literally reinventing the wheel. Most of the time someone (especially in a MB)will either keep their tires in good shape or call a tow truck to take care ofa repair. Either way, when you turn inyour lease and you have other than OE RUN FLAT tires, be prepared to fork oversome cash..

asualum

So the run flats only make it 20K miles?

ML63 AMG

This is silly, you can run any tire you want as long as the tires have matching diameter front and rear and are identical size all around of the same brand.

If fact the one tire you SHOULD NOT run is the run flat. They are stupid heavy, ride terribly rough and kill performance (and almost always have significantly less grip)

Michelin Pilot Super Sports ... Period

rediesel

Didn't realize the CLA was sans spare and on run flats. That sucks. Went thru this on my BMW. RunFlatTires (RFT) or Zero Pressure (ZP) aren't as good as their traditional conterparts as they have less grip, wear faster, ride harder, get less MPG, and wiegh more. They also shouldn't be repaired if you pick up a nail. The only "benefit" is car manufactures get to design a car without a spare.

I had Pilot Sport 2's in RFT on my 3 old series and non RFT on my E320 both 18" staggard. The difference was night and day. I eventually opted to get traditional tires on the BMW and be without a spare.

Lots of BMW lessees were taking the RFT's off immediately - storing them for trade in and running non-recommened rubber (some got spare kits too). The Pilot Super Sport is my current fav perfomance tire.