So I guess it is pretty clear for everyone by now that I think the Hankook tires are the best offer on the market today. My car has a set too so I do know how they feel while driving and during the test drives I go on almost daily with different customers I have had the chance to test most of their models and compare them with other brands and other price ranges. And while I will admit that you can sense a difference between a high end model from a high end company and a Hankook tire all the other medium range companies are just about the same in terms of quality.

However where Hankook sweeps in and really has the edge is on the price difference between them and most other companies. I love their prices and most of all I love the fact that often enough I can find a sale on Hankook tires so I can get them even cheaper. Of course I am not saying to jeopardize your family’s safety only because of the cheap price, but in my experience, they are also very good tires.

So after 15 years’ worth of experience I can honestly tell you that the Hankook tires are worth exactly what they are priced at and that is very little. They have a very resistant wire shell and a tough rubber and silica exterior. But here’s the thing, while you do want that outer shell to be hard enough that it won’t wear out during the first 20.000 miles, you also want it to be soft and rubbery enough to adhere well to the pavement when you hit the brakes. But in my experience Hankook tires don’t really do that and you can do this experiment yourself: pick out an empty lane, go up to 30, 40 miles an hour and then slam the brakes, and then ask a friend who has Hankook tires to do the same. Unless your tires are as bad and useless as his you will see how you will have left a very thick rubber mark on the pavement while the Hankook tires will barely leave a mark.

And those extra hard tire tracks will also not be very good in rainy conditions because the more rigid a tire is the easier it will be to hydroplane. So although many people are tempted by the low price and the fact that modern cars have assisted braking and cornering I still believe that the place where the car meets the road is the first one where you should invest money and make as secure as possible.

To get to the point there are 2 ways in which a tire’s life is ended: you can replace it or it can blow out while you are driving and that almost always causes an accident. But the interesting thing is that as tires grow old they get these wrinkles that let you know they are old. If you choose to ignore those then two things can happen. Some of the just give out like I said before but other do have one more warning sign: they start to lose their outer shell and you ride will get more and more bumpy. Now the thing I appreciate about Hankook tires is that they will actually do that and I have seen cars with tires in such a state that I simply could not understand why those people had bothered to come for an auto inspection; you could see the inner steel mesh, which is absolutely terrible.

But the point here is that those Hankook tires were still working and had given their owners a lot of warning before actually giving out. And I think that is great because I know that there are many people, my wife included, who never pay enough attention to their tires so they can tell that they have aged. But with some brands, and Hankook is included among those, you do have a warning period before the tire actually explodes.