easy way to see the UTG Ratings for various tire brands. The UTG ratings are required by the government. some tires, but in gerneral only brand name tires. the tire, you can figure out who actually built the tire. For instance Goodyear's Kelly Springfield subsiduary also market tires under the MultiMile brand. Are they as good as Kelly Springfield tires? I don't know. My Father always claimed they were better. Ironically he always claimed Goodyear tires were sorry. Even more ironically he is riding around on Country Squire Radials which are actually just Goodyear made tires. On the other hand they have been far better than the Firestones that came on his Ranger.
My opinion is that the different in cost between quality tires and crummy tires is trival when spread over the life of the tires. Nothing can ruin a car's driving characteristics faster than second rate tires. My first bad experience with "bad" private label tires was a set of Grand Prix Radials I bought for my Datsun 280Z. Turns out these were private labeled Firestone Radial 500 tires. Yuck! That was the last time I bought private label tires for my own vehicles.
Ed
