My favorite tire for the typical forester/outback suburb crowd I see at work is still the Continental contiprocontact series. Decent wear, decent performance, easy to install, easy to patch, balance is usually good.
I've always had good performance out of Conti GPs. I've tried other brands but keep coming back to them.
I wanted to post my thoughts after a first winter drive with these Contis. They are stock 19" tires on my R and came with the vehicle. The VikingContact 7s have been more than excellent. Compared to the Conti TS830s, I definitely do not feel like I am at times running a summer tire in the winter. For this winter I feel completely confident in bad conditions like the X Ice 3 was. However, the HUGE plus is on dry conditions which happens a lot during winter here. I always felt the slight sponginess of the X Ice 3 (18s would have made a difference for sure), but these VikingContact 7s in dry are spectacular. They truly do everything in winter extremely well, and I would never think of buying another tire again...they are that good.
Just swapped out my stock 32s for GP5000 28s and it’s noticeably faster.
I know it wasn’t included in the ask, but the Continental LX25 are a fantastic tire as well. We live in Northeast PA and these have been great all around. I’ve used Continentals for almost 20 years and haven’t been disappointed yet.
I put Continental ExtremeContact on my Miata last Summer and I am all in on those tires. I could not overdrive them.
Amazing tire… I’m on my second set.
Awd on stock conti tires. This is my second winter…
Just point and hit the gas. The awd will figure it out.
Maybe I'm just luck as far as flats go, but I've never really been pleased with the ride and grip trade off for something like the 4 Season compared to something more in the "performance" category.
Not caring about rolling resistance is one thing, but something like a GP5000 (or similar tire from whatever brand,) just rides better.
I hate my current set of DWS06, just got new set last week and car has been shaking like a one hour hotel room bed. 1 tire was showing a 40 on road force and could not be balanced. New one came in next day and car still vibrating 70 and above.
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