Originally Posted By: Button
People take CR Results way too serious. For example on car reliability . . . if you compare JD Power vs. CR there results vary greatly.
Nevertheless, Michelin makes excellent tires but in my opinion aren't worth the premium prices when you can get comparable tires for much cheaper.
Their tire testing is a whole different animal. Their vehicle reliability reports are based only on survey data, which are voluntary. There's no reliability to that data.
But their tire testing is done in-house, using instrumented tests. The only subjective ratings are noise and ride quality. Everything else is a measured metric.
In the tire world, there aren't too many resources to turn to. Tire Rack is a great one, but they tend to focus on performance tires. For light truck tires and passenger car tires, CR is about the only game in town as far as objective ratings.
I don't really care for CR as a whole, and don't even subscribe to the print magazine. But I subscribe online, and follow their tire testing program extremely closely. It's good data.
I would also take exception to your notion of "comparability", but that's just based on my own experience. Belonging to the Michelin club myself, there are enough value-adds to me with that brand that it's typically the one I choose. If you do enough research, Michelin tires are often among the cheapest to own as well, on a cost-per-mile basis, due to their often class-leading rolling resistance. The current #1-rated HydroEdge in the latest CR test being a curious exception.