Not only do we have one of the largest selection of new tires in the area, but all 13 of our locations have state-of-the-art equipment and employees with Tire Industry Association (TIA) and Tire Pressure Monitoring Service (TMPS) training. Our expertise,and the tools we use ensure that we’ll be able to finish your tire installation quickly and safely. Our inventory includes Bridgestone tires, Michelin tires, Goodyear tires, Toyo tires and many other reputable brands, as well as tires for high performance, all-season endurance and more. And when you purchase tires from us, you’ll also get FREE lifetime rotations and wheel balances. So have one of our friendly experts recommend the right match for your car and driving style. You won’t find a better shopping experience anywhere else. See our full warranty for complete details and limitations, and learn more about how specifically a tire warranty works compared to other warranty types. BFGoodrich TiresBridgestone TiresContinental TiresCooper TiresDunlop tiresFalken TiresFirestone TiresFuzion TiresGeneral TiresGoodyear TiresHankook TiresKelly TiresKumho TiresMichelin TiresNitto TiresPirelli TiresToyo TiresUniroyal TiresYokohama Tires
We service all major automotive brands including Acura, BMW, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, GMC, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Jeep, Lexus, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, & Toyota 2015 Kia Sedona Road Test 2015 Kia Sedona: Ride Quality by Ed Hellwig, Executive Editor on February 16, 2016 A reader who owns a new Sedona asked what we thought about the ride quality of our 2015 Kia Sedona long-termer. He seems to think that it would ride better with a different set of tires. Factory-spec tires are always a compromise. They're designed to ride well, of course, but they also need to last a long time, help deliver great mileage, work well in all kinds of weather and not cost a fortune. That's a tall order for any tire and usually results in something that's about average across the board. If you want something that rides better, you can probably find it. If you want something that will last forever, there's a tire for that, too. I think our Sedona has a pretty soft ride on the stock Kumho tires.
You get the occasional hard impact but that's more likely the result of the suspension running out of travel. It's very smooth on the highway, and in the city it soaks up most rough roads without much harshness. A set of more forgiving tires might make it even better, but I wouldn't go out of my way to try it. Ed Hellwig, Executive Editor @ 10,403 miles Current Long-Term Road Tests 2016 BMW 340i xDrive 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV 2016 Nissan Titan XD 2016 Tesla Model X ebeaudoin's 2001 Toyota Camry Graham Peters' 2013 Mercedes-Benz B250 michaell's 2015 Subaru Outback 3.6R PF_Flyer's 2014 Nissan Versa Note Roadburners's 2007 Mazdaspeed 3 Sandman's 2015 VW Golf SE TSI TX_Traveler's 2010 Toyota Prius Share your own long-term updates.Here's how to participate. Past Long-Term Road Tests 2014 Acura MDX AWD 2015 Acura TLX SH-AWD 2011 Acura TSX Sport Wagon 2009 Audi A4 Avant 2015 BMW M235i Convertible
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2014 Kia Cadenza Limited 2011 Kia Optima SX Turbo 1996 Lexus ES 300 2013 Lexus GS 350 2015 Lexus RC F 2006 Lexus RX 400h 2014 Mazda 3 S 2012 Mazda 3 Skyactiv 2014 Mazda CX-5 Grand Touring AWD 1994 Mazda MX-5 Miata 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata 2008 Mercedes-Benz C300 Sport 2005 Mercedes-Benz CL65 AMG 2012 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Roadster 2011 Mini Cooper Countryman All4 2007 Mini Cooper S 2010 Mitsubishi Outlander GT 2010 Mitsubishi Outlander Sport SE 2013 Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet 2015 Porsche Macan S 2014 Ram 1500 EcoDiesel 2014 SLP Panther Camaro 2010 Suzuki Kizashi GTS 2013 Tesla Model S 2012 Toyota Prius C 2015 Volkswagen Golf GTI 2011 Volkswagen Jetta TDI 2013 Volkswagen Passat TDI 2014 Volkswagen Passat TSI 2012 Volvo S60 T5 2010 Volvo XC60 T6 AWD Jun 5th 2014 at 1:58PM Flat-out down Mid-Ohio's long back straight – not really straight because it has a fast dog-leg kink – braking hard into the tricky right-left combination that follows, I was having a great time.
For a former racer, any time spent on a wonderful road course like Mid-Ohio, even in a middling, front-drive, four-cylinder compact car, is quality time. The occasion was a small media show-and-tell put on by Korean tire-maker Kumho to tout its latest high-performance tires, which were indeed very good on Mid-Ohio's rolling, twisting road course and in autocross tests in an adjacent parking lot. Not designed for driving fun, LRR tires are instead optimized to minimize energy. But the Kumho folks also briefly mentioned their latest low-rolling resistance (LRR) tire, which we were not there to test that day. Not designed for driving fun, LRR tires are instead optimized (as their name implies) to minimize energy used as they flex and compress while your vehicle rolls down the road. That Mid-Ohio day has been in the back of my mind for quite a while, but until now I regretfully haven't gotten around to looking into LRR tires, though I do have some experience with them from my 1990s years as test and development manager for GM Advanced Technology Vehicles, primarily on the production EV1.
Clive Roberts, my lead development engineer at the time, worked exhaustively with tire suppliers before settling on the best at the time, from Michelin. It was tall, narrow and hard, but Clive and the Michelin team made it work amazingly well despite its ride-challenging 50-psi pressure. Every tire's balance of attributes – dry cornering and braking, wet cornering and braking, noise, wear, rolling resistance, etc. – can be graphically expressed on a "spider" chart. Each characteristic is plotted along one spoke of the web, its performance represented by its distance from the center, so an attribute-balanced tire's chart is a near-circle. But the tire engineer's hair-pulling challenge is that optimizing one attribute often diminishes others, so it's very difficult to get all of any tire's key characteristics to the outside of the web. And in our pursuit of the lowest possible rolling resistance – critically important to an electric car that begins each day with the energy equivalent of a half-gallon of gas on board – as we pushed that attribute out, we found that wet traction and wear were adversely affected.
Somewhere between five and 15 percent of the fuel consumed by a typical vehicle goes to overcome the hysteresis of the tire material as it rolls, a force represented by the tires' rolling resistance coefficient (RRC). Construction and materials are most important, but tire pressure, vehicle weight and speed all play a role. Most modern passenger car tires have an RRC between 0.007 and 0.014, with a lower coefficient meaning they will use less energy. "Lower rolling resistance does not mean other attributes such as mileage or wet traction have to be sacrificed" – Sam Dollyhigh "Fortunately, many years of developing technology for original-equipment business, where fuel efficiency has long been a high priority, has helped establish Continental as one of the leaders in low rolling resistance technology," contends Continental Tire product planning manager Sam Dollyhigh. "It is true that a tire is a complex balance of performance attributes, and typically wet performance, wear and rolling resistance conflict with each other.
However, through advancements in technology, lower rolling resistance does not mean other attributes such as mileage or wet traction have to be sacrificed. "Through significant investments in R&D, Continental has been able to grow the spider chart. We still focus heavily on wet braking and wet traction because our customer's safety is our top priority, and we also understand that long mileage is a top criterion for consumer satisfaction. So we do not use strategies to improve rolling resistance that would lead us away from either wet traction or mileage." Continental labels its latest advancements in polymer technology EcoPlus, "which combines our technical expertise in rolling resistance with excellent mileage and class-leading wet braking," Dollyhigh asserts. Continental's CrossContact LX20 (for Crossover, SUVs and light trucks), PureContact (for luxury performance vehicles) and TrueContact premium all-season tires (for passenger cars and minivans) use EcoPlus technology. For the latter, Continental claims not only long wear and best-in-class wet braking but also that it can save as much as $550 in fuel cost over its life.
"We are currently researching the next generation of EcoPlus Technology," Dollyhigh adds, "which will concentrate on improving the hysteretic properties of various internal tire components to further improve rolling resistance without any impact to the other important tire performance characteristics." And while LRR tires can be more expensive, "We don't ask the consumer to pay more for low rolling resistance," he says. "We compete on price with the competitive set." All tiremakers have made significant reductions in rolling resistance in recent years, and many market tires (both OE and replacement) specifically developed to minimize it. Which ones are worn by some of today's most energy-efficient EVs and hybrids? The Nissan Leaf EV uses Bridgestone Ecopia all-season tires on S and SV grades and Michelin Energy Savers on top SL trims. Chevrolet's Spark EV uses specially-developed Bridgestones, while the Volt gets Goodyear Fuel Max LRR all-seasons. "Tires are a balance of ride, handling, braking, noise, traction and efficiency," says Volt chief engineer Andrew Farah.
"With Volt and Spark, efficiency was given more weight than usual in the balance." Ford's Focus EV and C-Max Hybrid use Michelin Energy Saver A/S, which was selected, Ford says, "because it offers some of the industry's lowest rolling resistance while still allowing us to meet our vehicle dynamics standards and best-in-class NVH." The Fiat 500e uses Firestone Firehawk GT all-season tires. "Our rationale behind that," explains 500e chief engineer Brett Giem, "is that they are one of the two 15-inch tires already in the Fiat 500 assembly plant, they meet the weight ratings we need, and an industry search confirms that they have the lowest rolling resistance rating available worldwide." I can't advise which replacement LRR tires to slap onto your EV, hybrid or conventional vehicle when the time comes. We all would like to maximize energy savings, but don't pay an unreasonable price for what will turn out to be a small-percentage improvement, or sacrifice other important tire attributes for the lowest available RRC.