Because they aren’t close in price. The Falkens are probably 85-90% of the tire for 60% of the price.
Depending on the vehicle of course, hence my qualifier on the question:
"if they are close in price".
For my X3M, it is $3000 out the door to buy the original PS4S again. An alternative option would be Kumho PS71 for literally about half the price.
Yes, I appreciate that situation, I was recently in a similar boat with my Jeep. The OE Pirelli run flats, which are an awful riding tire and last roughly 15-20,000km, were ~$2,500 USD for the set. Add shipping, exchange and tax and that's close to $5,000 CDN.
Stepping down to the top rated UHP All Season, was considerably less expensive, and the route I ended up going:
I’m not cheap, but I need to see value there. I’m not going to put $150 tires on it but I’m not going to pay double for tires that are 10% better either.
Right. The reason I phrased the question as I did was that I plugged in 2018 Mercedes C63 AMG and got these two options in the Summer categories:
That's not a big price difference.
Also - OE tire on an RS5? Continental or… Hankook. On an X3M? Michelin, Conti or… Hankook.
I'm not one that sees "OE tire" and immediately takes that as a glowing endorsement. The OE's on my SRT were heavy, hard and wore rapidly. I paid a premium to have them equipped when I ordered the vehicle, as the standard tire is a Pirelli RFT All Season. I was expecting a nice high performance summer to be available (non-RFT) from Conti or Michelin to replace them, but alas, that was not the case, which is why I ended up going the UHP A/S route. I had the PSS on my M5 and loved everything about them. The OE Goodyear tires on my wife's RAM were downright dangerous in the wet and wore rapidly, even the OE and non-OE versions of the same tire can have considerable differences in their characteristics meaning the review one reads from say Tire Rack, doesn't align with that same tire when it's an OE tire by the same name.
Falken has been around forever, owned by Sumitomo who also own Dunlop Japan, pretty decent product for the most part.
Yes, I mentioned that in a later post, Falken is to Sumitomo what BF Goodrich is to Michelin. I don't consider either Falken or BFG to be bad tires, but they are more budget-oriented than their parent companies. As I said, my question was why, if you can get a Michelin or Conti at close to the same price, would somebody go with the Falken? Obviously if there's a HUGE price difference, the question doesn't apply.
