I suppose that this is true. My Outback came from the factory with OEM Continental tires (“Contact… something…”) and among the many problems that I had with those tires was a really annoying vibration that would be set-up in the steering wheel on one particular part of I-287, even though the tires had been road force balanced. This was the type of vibration that sometimes caused my hands to become numb, so it was more than being merely annoying.
When I replaced those Continentals with Michelins, the above-mentioned problem (as well as many others…) disappeared. I can’t imagine that Continental could sell many of those tires if everyone experienced that particular hand-numbing problem, so I suppose that they were a particularly bad “fit” for my vehicle.
The OP is fixated on his 7 year old Rogue . Even if he did get response from say 10 2012 Rogue owners he would probably get 7 to 10 different tire brands . And how many of those would even know if the ones they have made a difference over the original tires.
Does the UTQG treadwear rating only compare tires within the same brand? So for example if BFG had a treadwear rating of 400, and a Goodyear had a treadwear rating of 400 also. It doesn’t mean that you can necessarily expect the tire to last the same amount. So in theory a Michelin with a 300 treadwear rating might equivalent to a General with a 500 treadwear rating. I might not be explaining this exactly right, but the gist of it is that treadwear ratings between different manufactures aren’t directly comparable.
The UTQG rating was created by NHSTA to be a comparative measure between all brands and models of tires so the consumer had some way to measure claims made by different tire makers. Same for the A, B, C ratings.
The caveat is always “Your experience may vary” because a weekend autocrosser will not experience the same wear rates as a highway commuter. The rating is just - an 800 treadwear tire will give twice the mileage of a 400 TW tire in similar use. The tire manufacturer can understate the rating number if testing shows greater wear performance on the standard test but not overstate it.
Testing uses something called a Course Monitoring Tire as a control tire to compare against the manufacturer’s model in independent testing.