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Ok I’m going shopping for tires and it occurred to me that my last set of Yokohamas was made in the USA, should I make sure my next set of tires are American made?
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Good luck with that one…..
Take your pick…..
1. The only 2 U.S. tire companies left (for practical uses) are
Goodyear Tires, Cooper Tires (which owns Avon Tires).
but neither of them manufacture all their tires in the U.S.
You can add two more companies for non-practical applications
*Hoosier (track tires)
*Titan (off road tires)
…but I doubt you will be using tires from either companies.
The remainder of manufacturers look like this….
1. Yokohama is a Japanese company, as well as Bridgestone/Firestone
2. Dunlop is British company that is 75% owned by Goodyear and 25% owned by Sumitomo Tires
3. Sumitomo Tires is a Japanese tire company that has purchased the right to sell tires with the Dunlop brand… It also owns Falken Tires, which is based in the U.S.
4. Michelin is a French company that also owns BF Goodrich (and as a result produces tires of both brands in both U.S. and foreign facilities)
5. Continental is a German company with manufacturing all over, including U.S. and China
6. Pirelli is an Italian company with manufacturing all over too
7. Hankook Tires is a Korean company with manufacturing all over
8. Nexen is a Korean company
9. General Tire is an Indian company
10. Toyo is a Japanese company
I think you’re better off buying the best performing tire your money is worth imho.
FWIW: I’ve had pretty good experiences with Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 for most of summer/fall/spring and Michelin Pilot A/S Plus as a general all season (can get buy as a *light* snow tire if you have AWD)
The other thing I use to run were Continental Sports Contact 2 as a summer/fall/spring tire (I didn’t like).
And the Continental Extreme Contact for winter (Which were ok, but squealed a lot).
You probably don’t need two sets of tires down here, because the likelihood of you needing tires with snow traction is almost 0 unless you like to ski a lot… It helps if you’re up in the bay area and want to go to Tahoe a lot.
I ran a set of for a brief 3 months BF Goodrich (I forget what they were), but they were ridiculously crappy…. They were cheap (in cost) and as a result, cheap quality too..
