Kumho Ecsta MX (Extreme Performance Summer Tires)

[jomotopia]

Bang for Buck: 5/5 - These tires give great performance for the price. I got them for about $100 each, and from the other reviews on Tire Rack, they perform as well as or better than tires costing 2 to 3 times as much. I think they just don't last quite as long

Dry Grip (Warm Weather): 4/5 - I would give them a 5/5 but I'm sure there are many tires out there that perform better, however they probably cost much more. This was only the 2nd set of tires on my STi, and the first set were crappy all season tires, so I don't have a lot to compare them to. But they were awesome.

Wet Grip (Warm Weather): 4/5 - Great in the wet. Until they were about bald I never had any problem with hydroplaning or powering out of a turn on a wet road.

Dry Grip (Cold Weather): 2/5 - Of course, these are summer tires. I thought I would be OK on these living in Atlanta, GA, since it doesn't really get THAT cold here, and rarely snows. But once the temperature drops below about 40 degrees F, these tires are like rocks. On dry roads in ~30F weather I was able to spin the rear tires going through turns with the center diff in auto mode. This should not happen on my AWD car. In hard turns off throttle I would begin to understeer easily. These tires made me decide that I need to have all season tires here.

Wet Grip (Cold Weather): 1/5 - Even worse. I spun completely off the road getting on the throttle around a wet curve on a cold day, and that was at about half throttle in 3rd gear.

Wear: 3/5 - They lasted me longer than I expected, especially with my aggressive driving style, but still not really that long. I am not sure exactly how many miles, but they lasted me about 21 months and I drive about 15k miles a year. By the end though they were really worn down.

Noise: 2/5 - They're not exactly quiet tires, and they have a tendency to flat spot while sitting in the garage over night, so the first 10 minutes or so of every drive in the morning comes with vibrations and "whump whump" noises until they warm up and "re-round" themselves.

Ride Quality: 3/5 - Not too bad in warm weather, but quite uncomfortable in cold, driving on rocks weather.

Tramlining: 1/5 - These tires definitely follow the imperfections in the road, especially in cold weather.

Overall Rating: 4/5 - All in all, if you aren't going to be driving in sub 40F temperatures (or don't want to drive fast/aggressively when it's cold), and you don't want to spend a fortune on other performance tires, these tires are fantastic. If I was only going to be using them in warm weather, I would buy them again without a doubt.

[Draklen]

You're missing the "Feasibility of Sexual Encounters" section. heh.

Same with your other review.

[AHTOXA]

This review made me go back to tirerack and rethink my summer tire selection and I'm glad I did. I clicked into the wishlist option and happened to notice that some high performance summer tires that I picked are only R rated, which is 106 mph. This is weird for a summer performance tire. Hell, my governor does not kick in until 135.

So after looking around, unless anything changes prior to spring, Kumho MXs are going to be my summer tires. Winter or cold does not matter as I have a set of winter tires.