Tire Recommendation?

[NJSCBob]

I just purchased this vehicle in June and love it. It has the original equipment Goodyear Integrity tires and they need replacement. I am partial to Michelin, but the price is really high. Can someone recommend a decent tire that will offer a quiet ride and good gas mileage? I am in South Carolina, so snow is not an issue, but it rains pretty hard here at times. Thanks for your help!

[Filehorse]

I was faced with the same question exactly two years ago after going through the Goodyears and a set of Michelins. It was time to re-tire and the brands I had been running seemed a bit much on the expensive side. I went to the Tire Rack website and researched what was available for my RX300, read the reviews, and compared specifications and prices an decided on the YOKOHAMA AVID TRZ. That was 15,000 miles ago and, based on the performance-to-date, I'd gladly buy them again. They are very quiet, stay balanced, and perform well in the wet. And the cost was $300 less than anything else I was considering. I buy all my tires from Tire Rack because they have an incredible selection and I can get them delivered, mounted and balanced for less than I can go to my local full-service retail tire store and get the same thing. Actually, my local full-service tire can NOT carry the selection available on Tire Rack and UPS has them delivered in two working days after the order is placed. Hope this helps.

[RX in NC]

The best bang-for-the-buck tire we had on my wife's former 2000 RX300 AWD with 16-inch wheels was the Firestone Destination LE. The tire is based on the same technology as the Bridgestone Alenza at less than two-thirds the price. 60,000-mile treadwear warranty, great wet traction, relatively quiet - they really deliver for the money. I put a set on my 1999 Dodge Ram pickup in June and they do just as well on my full-size truck as they did on the RX300. I would run them on my wife's current 2004 RX330 AWD, but this vehicle has 18-inch wheels and the last time I checked, the Destination LE is not built in 18-inch sizes. So I run Alenzas on that vehicle....

Another tire winning high praise is the Yokohama Avid ENVigor. It was just introduced in March so there's not a great deal of data on it yet. But the tire-testing outfits love it and so do most of the customers who've bought it thus far....