Cheers Ron!

The Hankook RA08's in 195R14 that I bought from you more than 4 years
and 40 to 50,000 miles ago are still running fine.
They aren't snow tires, but then they weren't expected to be, and for
everything else - including ride and handling - they're great.

Steve Edwards, Chicago - 91 GL daily driver with Subaru 2.2 in the
trunk.

On Jul 23, 2009, at 1:44 PM, Automatic digest processor wrote:

> Date:    Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:16:49 -0400
> From:    The Bus Depot <vanagon@BUSDEPOT.COM>
> Subject: Interesting Tire Comparison
>
> The latest Car And Driver Magazine did a head-to-head of 10
> comparably rated
> tires from competing manufacturers. One of their goals was to find
> out if an
> off-brand tire with the same tread pattern and sidewall specs
> (traction,
> load capacity, speed rating, etc.) as a name brand tire would actually
> perform as well (or at least close).
>
> In the end they rated a Dunlop tire #1, closely followed by a
> Hankook that
> was half its price and the cheapest of them all (besides the off-brand
> tire). As for the comparably-spec'd Chinese off-brand tire?  It
> scored so
> poorly that "we had to round up its score to zero to keep it from
> being
> negative" and could not recommend it even at the $57 "bargain"
> price. Even
> the second worst tire in the ratings almost tripled its score.  (As an
> interesting aside, the Kumho tire was highly rated on dry roads,
> but was
> undone by wet-road handling that was "nothing short of diabolical.")
>
> How does this relate to Vanagon tires?  Of course the results
> cannot be
> applied directly, as these high performance tires are not Vanagon
> tires. But
> it clearly illustrates that you cannot go by sidewall specs (such
> as load
> capacity) alone. Those specs are important in order to rule out
> tires that
> are simply underrated for the vehicle and must be dismissed out of
> hand ...
> but the remaining tires can still vary from "excellent" to
> "diabolical."  In
> Vanagon speak, this means that a cheap tire with a C or D load
> rating may
> still be a lousy tire, not remotely comparable to a quality tire
> with the
> same load rating.
>
> Choose wisely.
>
> See http://busdepot.com/details/tires.jsp for more on Vanagon tire
> safety.
>
>
> - Ron Salmon
>   The Bus Depot, Inc.
>   www.busdepot.com
>   (215)  234-VWVW
>
> _____________________________________________
> Toll-Free for Orders by PART # :  1-866-BUS-DEPOT