Mitch Alsup

I remember driving to Morgantown WV to Pitshburgh PA in -17º weather on "rain tires"*.on glare ice.
When you came to curved overpasses on the interstate, you had to line up the car towards one edge of the pavement, aim at the other side at the middle of the overpass, and hope to get traction before running off the road at the other side.

I was using "rain tires" because you bought them in the fall before the rains started and later snow, and the tread would last until about summer whence they became slicks with more traction during the dry season. {{This was 1976 way before the R-compound revolution}}

emilner

I just put Michelin Pilot A/S non run flats on my S. Fantastic tires. Quiet, super smooth and as good performance wise as you would want from an S class.

Nico9182349

Just ordered the Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 6. Supposedly almost matches the Continental Premiumcontact 7 in performance but is quieter and a tad cheaper. Will report back! Will be an interesting switch from the runflat P-Zeros.

happyeds

Sorry to read that you ordered Goodyear. In the usa they are junk. Had a set on my S560 and sent them to the junkyard after 3 months. Put on Michelin.

Nico9182349

What happened exactly, can you elaborate? To be honest, I haven't had great experiences with any tyre really. They're good when they're new but I generally seem to grind down tyres fast. I probably drive to fast or something. I always have the weirdest signs of wear. Not just with the S560. And no, the alignment is fine, haha. Soooo basically I'm giving the goodyears a shot now. Funny that you mention "in the US", these particular ones I got are actually made in Germany. So who knows, maybe they get some magic German sprinkles on them and I get lucky. Will report back!

happyeds

The last set of Goodyear tires 2 out of 4 were very hard to balance and the installer would tell me ok you are all set yet, when I drove away it was not ok. Next I went to another Goodyear store same thing, so I just drove them for awhile. Next a side wall bubble appeared on one front tire, not covered. Goodyear was not going to do a replacement as long as they could kept trying to balance. It was just too frustrating to deal with the cheap s.o.b's. That was when I put the Michelin tires on. The store where I bought the Michelin tires showed me why the Goodyears were hard to balance. Something about the cords were torn on the inside wall. All of this with less than 5,000 miles and I drive in the southern states where the roads are still big pot hole free.

zitsky

I've had the Conti Extreme Contact on a previous S500 and I liked their performance in dry/wet/snow conditions. I'm pretty sure my C240 was Continental also. We don't get a lot of snow where I am just enough to make it worth having AWD. But the last 2 years no snow.

I have P-Zero Nero run flat now on my S560. They are OK. I honestly can't say there is much difference. My car is low mileage. When it's time to change I may go back to Continental.

Nico9182349

It really sounds like you got a bad batch or something to me. Especially the balancing is interesting. My tyre guy said they were noticeably easy to balance actually. Will see, I have barely driven them. I'll report back at the end of the season. Btw what size are you running? I'm on 245 45 R19/275 40 R19.

Lou B

I am not knowledgeable about tires, but I spent many years selling our branded v-belts that were made by companies who also make and sell tires.
I can tell you without hesitation, that these products are sometimes produced with flaws. Why not - it's a human-designed, human-made product with humans involved in the manufacturing process. It just happens, regardless of how many times a mold is used in production. Catching bad v-belts in our warehouse when completing an order for vibration-checked belts, most FHP belts going on heating or A/C units, and matching a group of belts to produce a matched set for an industriasl application was where we would find the bad items. The problems were not visible or could not be ascertained or discovered just in handling the belt.

SW20S

Thats the big difference between brands in my experience, consistent quality. Michelins are almost always round, need very little weight to balance. Other brands you're more likely to find a bad tire and need to swap it for another one. I've been running Pirellis for the last few years and they have been great, but I have had to have the odd tire swapped here and there.