Anyone Subscribe to Consumer Reports?

[krousdb]

Anyone Subscribe to Consumer Reports? A few of us have been discussing Low Rolling Resistance Tires. I know that Consummer Reports does tire testing and in 2006 I saw that they had tested for rolling resistance. I am wondering if they did additional testing in 2007. If so, could someone share the results?

[Blake]

I'm about to bite the bullet and buy it for the benifit of everyone here. I can't tell if anyone has subscribed to it as this has come up MANY times and no one has said so yet. I'll post back to this thread in a bit after I subscribe to post up any information.

[msirach]

I have an online subscription. I'll post the results after church.

[Daox]

They have rolling resistance as a rating on most of their tests. The first ones listed are rated higher overall. The tires listed all achieve the higest rolling resistance rate.

Tires below achieved the highest rolling resistance rating in the all season category. The date on the top of the chart says November of 2005.
Michelin X Radial DT
Michelin Agility Touring
Michelin Harmony
Hankook Mileage Plus GT H707
Kumho Touring 795 A/S
Toyo 800 Ultra
Sumitomo HTR T4

Tires below achieved the highest rolling resistance rating in the performance all season category. The date on the top of the chart says November of 2006.
Michelin Energy MXV4 Plus
Continental ContiPremierContact

Tires below achieved the highest rolling resistance rating in the all season ultra high performance category. The date on the top of the chart says November of 2007.
General Exclaim UHP
Continental ContiPremierContact

No tires achieved the highest rating in the summer ultra high performance tires category. The date on the top of he chart says November of 2007.

Winter tires don't have a rolling resistance rating.

[lightfoot]

Better you than me! I subscribed to CR for many years and finally let it expire, sorry.

[rant on/] Recently so much of the info in it, particularly the car tests, was from such a different perspective than mine that it seemed to come from another planet. And so many of the articles dealt with stuff I have zero need for that it came across as consume consume consume. Also, it often happened that their test of things I WAS interested in did not include the particular manufacturers I was interested in (e.g., Nokian tires for example in the above tests).

For a while I subscribed to their website as well but it seemed to be just a searchable archive of previously published CR articles, so why pay twice for the same material?

I volunteered to be part of their focus group research, but all I got was a lot of surveys about which magazine cover layout was more enticing!

In 2003 when I was carshopping I eliminated the Insight when they called it cramped and noisy. Mine certainly is neither; wish I had not believed them. They also had a misstatement on their website that a certain vehicle (maybe an Accord Wagon? or a Passat Diesel Wagon?) would be coming to the US around that time. But when I found out the info was wrong and told them so they seemed unconcerned and did not correct it. People make plans and decisions trusting their published info, so it should be accurate.[/rant off/]

It seems like they do useful things so it would be good if someone here kept tabs on what CR is up to.

[krousdb]

Originally Posted by Daox

They have rolling resistance as a rating on most of their tests. The first ones listed are rated higher overall. The tires listed all achieve the higest rolling resistance rate.

Tires below achieved the highest rolling resistance rating in the all season category. The date on the top of the chart says November of 2005.
Michelin X Radial DT
Michelin Agility Touring
Michelin Harmony
Hankook Mileage Plus GT H707
Kumho Touring 795 A/S
Toyo 800 Ultra
Sumitomo HTR T4

Tires below achieved the highest rolling resistance rating in the performance all season category. The date on the top of the chart says November of 2006.
Michelin Energy MXV4 Plus
Continental ContiPremierContact

Tires below achieved the highest rolling resistance rating in the all season ultra high performance category. The date on the top of the chart says November of 2007.
General Exclaim UHP
Continental ContiPremierContact

No tires achieved the highest rating in the summer ultra high performance tires category. The date on the top of he chart says November of 2007.

Winter tires don't have a rolling resistance rating.

I guess we will have to wait until November 2008 for them to get around to the run of the mill all season tires again. I bought the Kumho Touring 795 A/S based on the November 2005 test but they are no longer available. I see the ContiPremierContact is on the 2006 list. I am considering those unless something else pops up before I need new tires.

[xcel]

Hi Dan:

___Although I have never seen any RRc numbers on them, the SP20 FE’s are OEM on the HCH-II and knowing Honda, I bet they are close to the B381’s? I just do not know if they come in the Prius’ P185/65R15 size or not?

___Just another thought anyway …

___Good Luck

___Wayne

[koreberg]

@lightfoot

I agree with you.

To me consumer reports is for people who can't do their own internet resarch, or just don't want to. I had a subscription, but just let it expire. Their computer reviews were terrible, and their electronic reviews were not much better. To me their reviewers just do not seem knowledgeable enough to know what to actually look for. I also found that many times they do not review many of the things I was interested in reading about.

[Blake]

Sadly they are the only source for numbers that are published on LRR tires that I know of. If anyone else knows a place to find these numbers I'd love to know.

[WriConsult]

By the way, the Toyo 800 Ultra listed in that review (by far the most popular tire here in the Pacific NW, thanks to Les Schwab) is no longer available. It has been replaced by the Toyo Tourevo, which I just placed on my Subaru in September. They handle better than the 800, are much quieter and roll at least as well. Good choice for those of us in Schwab country.