This may be a bit of a personal rant, but it has an automotive point. Lately tire manufacturers have been busy re-labeling tires in the search of a few extra bucks and confusing an entire set of customers.
The times change and sometimes not for the better. Once upon a time, we had ‘Performance’ tires, and ‘Street’ as standard classifications. Most street tires were all-seasons or winter, and ‘Performance’ were summer or track tires. Then, all the tires were ‘performance’ tires. Now, the category of ‘Ultra High Performance’, which used to be the way to describe track tires or at least, summer-only high speed tires, is now thrown everywhere. Whats next? Ultra High Performance winter tires? Ultra High Performance spare tires?
A few years later, every-label that defined a track tire has been used in any tire listed online. And when shopping online, the names and labels seem meaningless anymore. Of the 29 performance choices listed, only 6 of them truly are tires that can handle a track weekend. The rest are all all-seasons.
Case in point, recently was looking for a cheap set of track tires online. I decided to be ‘fancy’ and buy new tires. Found some Falkens that were labeled ‘Ultra High Performance’ and had ‘ZR’ on the nomenclature of the tire with a very long name. Only to find out, post-purchase, that they were ‘all season’ tires? what? When did tire manufacturers start doing this?
Also, the information whether a tire is all-season or not is just an icon in the page, yet the tire may be labeled as UHP. See the pic above. Unless you notice the icon, you would miss these are all season tires. (These were offered as a choice for ‘Track Tires’ in the website category)
I’m in the day 5 of returning a set of tires that were supposed to be track tires but are just all season and getting the correct ones. I’ve been to a good number of tire websites and a lot of them are doing this.
Be careful, triple check your tires BEFORE you order them. No one knows anymore what a ‘High Performance Tire’ is anymore online. This is why Johnny cant buy track tires anymore.
