Cost of Tyres for Skoda Octavia Saloon.

My folks were on holidays for the last few weeks so I stole the mother's Yaris for a while as we only have the one car at the moment.

She has put some cheap Chinese rubber on it and I could feel a difference since the last time I drove it. Steering was definitely more vague.
And all for a saving of probably less than fifty quid.

And that's a Yaris, I dread to think what they'd be like on anything half decent.

I just put four new tyres on my own car. When calling around all the local tyre shops for prices, almost every one tried to sell me some cheapos. Advance Pitstop were actually doing a 4 for 3 offer on some mystery brands.

Is there a whopper profit margin on the Chinese stuff? I would have presumed a shop would try to push the more expensive brands rather than the cheap ones.

Tea 1000 wrote: »

There is actually more profit on the cheap muck. Fools and their money again!!

and likewise we can equally say fools and their money again!! regarding to people who pay for expensive tyres

Tyre threads...the just go round and round

power pants wrote: »

absolutley nothing

:rolleyes:

Alun wrote: »

That's treads you're thinking of

Hah! I see what he did there!!

power pants wrote: »

Respectfully how would you know?

Never crashed my car, been driving for years and years.

What a silly remark to make.

Dont attack the poster if you have nothing sensible to say

The point he made was not exactly made well, but the thrust of it is that the argument against cheap tyres is that most drivers will only understand when a tyre is cheap when they find themselves in the circumstances where a lot of drivers hopefully will never experience. Those circumstances would be heavy braking, emergency manoeuvres etc.

I am sad enough to test heavy braking and moderate acceleration from a stop before and after I get rubber changed and I have been shocked at early how lower quality tyres give up their grip on the road compared to mid-range rubber. Note that I am not talking price here.

As I said earlier, I would imagine that most drivers will not have to rely heavily on the upper limits of their tyres grip but the scary thing for me is that I have noticed a huge variance in the headroom between being in control and and overwhelming the rubber.

Those upper limit differences could explain why one tyre would cause under-steer more than another at normal driving conditions which is fine and rightly doesn't matter to a lot of people but you can't dismiss the upper limit issue because your below the limit driving has been fine.

One thing I am reminded of is another classic Motors tyre debate; Summer vs. Winter tyres. No need to get into that here but I bring it up as during my research into the debate, I saw a few videos where mid to high range brands were tested on a wet road at a certain temp. and the stopping distance differential was staggering.

It is an exceptionally simplistic to have an attitude that experience in one driving condition would dictate the performance of the same tyres in another condition.