Nokians

[tirebob]

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So curious what the complaints are then? Haha. Hakka's have been by far the best winter tire I've had, and their new all weather has been the best all weather I had. Service I got from you guys was great but I was underwhelmed with the Toyos (granted that was back in the GS05 days).

No tire pleases everyone. I say it all the time, but I can line up 100 of you and put you all on the same products without knowing what they are and everyone will report differently their experiences. Your experience with the Toyo is a perfect example. I have tons of people who think they are the best thing ever and refuse to even look at another tire while others will not go near them with a 10 foot pole. It does not matter the brand either. It is true of all of them.

I have long given up on telling people something is good or bad because it simply is not that easy, especially nowadays. Some people just want it sticky with no regard to wear. Other people want handling without worry about being the stickiest. Other people want deep aggressive lugs for heavy snow with zero regard for road noise. Some people only care about price. The list goes on and on. I am not trying to convince anyone they are wrong or right. I just try and assess how a person uses their vehicle and what a tires specific characteristics are and how that applies to them. I make different suggestions to different people all the time based on these things. What is right for one person may be totally wrong for another. What is right for one set of conditions is wrong for another. What works well on one vehicle doesn't do as well on another.

If you love a certain product nothing I say will change your mind, nor do I want to. I just want to try and help people ask the questions of themselves about what they truly expect and help them mine through the differences of the options in how they relate to those expectations. The vast majority of the time almost everyone who does this ends up with a product they are happy with. Sometimes it doesn't always work out, but most often it does, and when it doesn't, I try and figure out what was the issue and use those lessons when helping the next person assess their needs.

[cet]

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So curious what the complaints are then? Haha. Hakka's have been by far the best winter tire I've had, and their new all weather has been the best all weather I had. Service I got from you guys was great but I was underwhelmed with the Toyos (granted that was back in the GS05 days).

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Agreed.

+1 I am running the Toyo's in the winter at the moment but have been underwhelmed. I'm going back to Nokian this season or next and it would be great if I could get them from Bob.

[tirebob]

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+1 I am running the Toyo's in the winter at the moment but have been underwhelmed. I'm going back to Nokian this season or next and it would be great if I could get them from Bob.

For the record, I personally do not prefer the Toyo either for what I do now, but I still know people who absolutely love them for their use. Like I said, I am no one size fits all guy. For me, I like studded tires and have always been a big fan of them. Other can't stand them but does that mean I am wrong? They are wrong? Of course not... I just don't get into those games anymore. I get people all the time ask me what my opinion is. More times than not the first thing out of my mouth is that my opinion has no relation to what they like.

[ercchry]

I don’t mind hakka’s from purely a performance in shit conditions perspective... but $/km in a real life calgary environment... holy shit do I roast them quickly... bigger fan of longevity, but also like spinning tires excessively, so I’m an outlier in this I’m sure... a nicely aged (hard hockey puck) alpin is the sweet spot

[tirebob]

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I don’t mind hakka’s from purely a performance in shit conditions perspective... but $/km in a real life calgary environment... holy shit do I roast them quickly... bigger fan of longevity, but also like spinning tires excessively, so I’m an outlier in this I’m sure... a nicely aged (hard hockey puck) alpin is the sweet spot

Not really an outlier at all... This is probably the biggest issue I get from people who come see me not wanting them again after using them.

[ercchry]

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Not really an outlier at all... This is probably the biggest issue I get from people who come see me not wanting them again after using them.

All I ask from a winter tire is to at least get me till April

[The Cosworth]

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No tire pleases everyone. I say it all the time, but I can line up 100 of you and put you all on the same products without knowing what they are and everyone will report differently their experiences. Your experience with the Toyo is a perfect example. I have tons of people who think they are the best thing ever and refuse to even look at another tire while others will not go near them with a 10 foot pole. It does not matter the brand either. It is true of all of them.

....................

What a cop out. :P

Kidding, yeah that is fair and actually why you're good at your job more than others. Dunning Kruger effect, if people tell me what is best, chances are they don't know. That's one of the reason I think you have so much respect in general, you know the nuance of your business.

I know for me what I've really started to appreciate as I get older is ride quality and noise. In the winter #1 is weather performance without studs. Then when I get a list of the 'best' of that group, then I go cheapest. I never worry about wear time, never keep a car long enough. Hahahah

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All I ask from a winter tire is to at least get me till April

My 2 winter hakka's lasted well on my STI. I just don't drive crazy hard on asphalt on them. Sounds more like a 'you' issue. Haha. Plus it was more fun driving it like I stole it in the snow.

[tirebob]

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What a cop out. :P

Kidding, yeah that is fair and actually why you're good at your job more than others. Dunning Kruger effect, if people tell me what is best, chances are they don't know. That's one of the reason I think you have so much respect in general, you know the nuance of your business.

I know for me what I've really started to appreciate as I get older is ride quality and noise. In the winter #1 is weather performance without studs. Then when I get a list of the 'best' of that group, then I go cheapest. I never worry about wear time, never keep a car long enough. Hahahah



My 2 winter hakka's lasted well on my STI. I just don't drive crazy hard on asphalt on them. Sounds more like a 'you' issue. Haha. Plus it was more fun driving it like I stole it in the snow.

I am admittedly one who is heavily resistant to drinking the koolaid flavour of the day, but even I can get pulled down the rabbit hole. It took me forever to even look at a Duratrac for all the same reasons, but after being convinced to use a set I am now a huge fanboy! lol! I will be the first person though who will still to tell people that ask for them and I know it will fail at what they want it to do to look elsewhere though.

[Mitsu3000gt]

To Bob's point, I work with someone who thinks Michelin Xice Xi3's are garbage because he put them on his light pickup truck without any weight in the bed and says they spin when he guns it off the line in the winter He has a different brand on a FWD sedan and loves them, never mind the fact that the sedan is a completely different vehicle with an engine sitting on top of the drive wheels lol. Objective data means nothing to these types of people, they are typically only interested in their highly uncontrolled testing with a sample size of one.

The #1 thing I look for in a winter tire is stopping distance on ice - that is the main thing that is going to help prevent an accident in most winter driving situations. The other 95% of the time most of Calgary's main roads are bare pavement, even if it's -30C out.

[ercchry]

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My 2 winter hakka's lasted well on my STI. I just don't drive crazy hard on asphalt on them. Sounds more like a 'you' issue. Haha. Plus it was more fun driving it like I stole it in the snow.

Sounds like you didn’t have enough hp

But no... I’m well aware I kill winters fast, just usually not that fast. If I swap front and rear I can usually do 2 seasons... but I think I killed those rears in feb? Hopeless, plus more grip... more speed, more wear

Now I have a little baby 4cyl truck... shouldn’t be an issue anymore!

[pheoxs]

I've wanted to run Hakkas for winter for quite some time but couldn't find anywhere to buy them aside from Kal-tire which I refuse to support. Would def be interested if they are available.

[killramos]

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I don’t mind hakka’s from purely a performance in shit conditions perspective... but $/km in a real life calgary environment... holy shit do I roast them quickly... bigger fan of longevity, but also like spinning tires excessively, so I’m an outlier in this I’m sure... a nicely aged (hard hockey puck) alpin is the sweet spot

Cost of tires have never even been a a rounding error in my TCO of vehicles.

Best performance over tire life any day of the week. Why pay for performance if all you are going to be doing is spinning tires all day long.

[redblack]

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I've wanted to run Hakkas for winter for quite some time but couldn't find anywhere to buy them aside from Kal-tire which I refuse to support. Would def be interested if they are available.

Same here, they wouldn’t sell to me unless I got an alignment. Ended up buying a set of different tires from urbanX

[pheoxs]

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Cost of tires have never even been a a rounding error in my TCO of vehicles.

Best performance over tire life any day of the week. Why pay for performance if all you are going to be doing is spinning tires all day long.

Pretty much, buy the best and never worry about it. Idk why people will drop 500$ for a used set of tires with 50% tred then 100$ to mount and balance vs just spend the grand for new tires and they'll last twice as long anyways.

[Mitsu3000gt]

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Pretty much, buy the best and never worry about it. Idk why people will drop 500$ for a used set of tires with 50% tred then 100$ to mount and balance vs just spend the grand for new tires and they'll last twice as long anyways.

Those are probably the same people who think all seasons are winter tires haha. I think a lot of people don't understand how important a good tire is, despite being the sole connection between your vehicle and the road and therefore also a huge safety factor.

I do like at least some balance of longevity and performance though, which IMO is pretty easy to achieve these days. You guys saying that best performance over tire life is all you care about, isn't buying new tires every few thousand KM overkill? I'm all for buying a high quality tire, but I wouldn't spend $1000++ every few thousand KM personally. Really sticky tires also throw a lot of gravel/debris at your paint which Calgary has a lot of but you'll never completely avoid that.

[The Cosworth]

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Those are probably the same people who think all seasons are winter tires haha. I think a lot of people don't understand how important a good tire is, despite being the sole connection between your vehicle and the road and therefore also a huge safety factor.

I do like at least some balance of longevity and performance though, which IMO is pretty easy to achieve these days. You guys saying that best performance over tire life is all you care about, isn't buying new tires every few thousand KM overkill? I'm all for buying a high quality tire, but I wouldn't spend $1000++ every few thousand KM personally. Really sticky tires also throw a lot of gravel/debris at your paint which Calgary has a lot of but you'll never completely avoid that.

I will say the All-Weathers I got are literally comparable to the Toyo winters I ran on the same truck. Pretty impressed with them. It was 7+ years of different technology though.

[tirebob]

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I will say the All-Weathers I got are literally comparable to the Toyo winters I ran on the same truck. Pretty impressed with them. It was 7+ years of different technology though.

Tire technology has been going through a lot of fast change the last while, especially in the compounding departments. Hard to say what covid will have done to that though. We will see over the next few years I guess. budgets have been disappearing everywhere!

[ercchry]

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Cost of tires have never even been a a rounding error in my TCO of vehicles.

Best performance over tire life any day of the week. Why pay for performance if all you are going to be doing is spinning tires all day long.

Firstly... Let’s quantify a few things.

Me: less than 10k kms/yr... probably 60/40 winter/summer, I kill a set of hakkas by Feb, so let’s call that 3k kms.... 3... thousand per $1000 after balancing... not factoring in the absolute PITA it is to actually get the work done. TCO was about $1.50/km, not including tires, nor other consumables (oil,gas,etc)... so yeah what’s another $0.33?

But here is the thing... you can’t use any of the performance of the car when the ground is dry on hakkas, the ground is always dry... alpin lasted 4x what the Hakka did with their harder compound and I gave up... uh, nothing on the odd blizzard, they also felt a hell of a lot more secure at high speed too.

So spending 4x more on anything for worse TOP performance is not something I can get behind, especially since I’ve never felt fear due to loss of control on ice... but I’m an outlier... I’m sure hakkas on the trophy wife’s G wagon are well worth it... for me? Nope, not even a little.

I’ve used almost every brand over the years and longevity and dry conditions performance are the only real measurable differences... and they go hand in hand. I will get off the line with the flow of traffic with any winter, not a concern... spending time at the tire shop, losing the ability to drive 8/10 what I can on summers, and yeah the higher than necessary tire budget are not worth it.

I’m not arguing that they are a GREAT shit conditions tire... but realistically, do you need that? Probably not. Not at the cost of the trade offs

[pheoxs]

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Those are probably the same people who think all seasons are winter tires haha. I think a lot of people don't understand how important a good tire is, despite being the sole connection between your vehicle and the road and therefore also a huge safety factor.

I do like at least some balance of longevity and performance though, which IMO is pretty easy to achieve these days. You guys saying that best performance over tire life is all you care about, isn't buying new tires every few thousand KM overkill? I'm all for buying a high quality tire, but I wouldn't spend $1000++ every few thousand KM personally. Really sticky tires also throw a lot of gravel/debris at your paint which Calgary has a lot of but you'll never completely avoid that.

For my personal use I don't drive enough for there to be much of a difference in longevity with looking at performance tires though. I'd be amazed if I put 15k a year on my Fiesta. With having two sets of tires thats around 7500 on summers and 7500 on winters. Most tires will easily last 3-5 years at that amount if not longer.

[killramos]

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Firstly... Let’s quantify a few things.

Me: less than 10k kms/yr... probably 60/40 winter/summer, I kill a set of hakkas by Feb, so let’s call that 3k kms.... 3... thousand per $1000 after balancing... not factoring in the absolute PITA it is to actually get the work done. TCO was about $1.50/km, not including tires, nor other consumables (oil,gas,etc)... so yeah what’s another $0.33?

But here is the thing... you can’t use any of the performance of the car when the ground is dry on hakkas, the ground is always dry... alpin lasted 4x what the Hakka did with their harder compound and I gave up... uh, nothing on the odd blizzard, they also felt a hell of a lot more secure at high speed too.

So spending 4x more on anything for worse TOP performance is not something I can get behind, especially since I’ve never felt fear due to loss of control on ice... but I’m an outlier... I’m sure hakkas on the trophy wife’s G wagon are well worth it... for me? Nope, not even a little.

I’ve used almost every brand over the years and longevity and dry conditions performance are the only real measurable differences... and they go hand in hand. I will get off the line with the flow of traffic with any winter, not a concern... spending time at the tire shop, losing the ability to drive 8/10 what I can on summers, and yeah the higher than necessary tire budget are not worth it.

I’m not arguing that they are a GREAT shit conditions tire... but realistically, do you need that? Probably not. Not at the cost of the trade offs

I’m not arguing for or against Hakkas, I’ve been very clear I have never run them, if you find another set that are equivalent that last longer that’s fine. I just don’t consider tire longevity to be an important factor in buying tires.

The whole Alpin’s are better 85% of the time debate us a completely different can of worms.

If Hakkas were materially better than every other tire 100% of the time I would consider burning through a set every 3,000km or once a season or whatever you want to call it to be money well spent. That’s still less than I spend on fucking parking