2015 Lexus NX - Premium vs regular

:grinning:

+1
And, that fictitious tire name isnā€™t all that far-fetched. I have seen some really bizarre names on the sidewall of cheap-o tires.

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Iā€™m usually fairly pleasantly surprised when a car salesman knows what the wheels are for. I certainly donā€™t expect them to know the nuances of why you might need premium with boosted engines. Itā€™s fairly amazing that this guy knew it involved the turbo at all.

My absolute favorite of these, of all time, is ā€œUnicorn Creation.ā€

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Well, I have to admit that I havenā€™t seen that one!

How about LingLong tires? Seriously cheap Chinese made tires sold at WalMart.

I have a friend who buys those LingLongs. And yes, he whines that his tires suck. ā€œSo buy better ones. You have a 6-figure job. Cripes.ā€

Here ya go @VDCdriver: http://tiredealsinc.com/products-page/tires/unicorn-creation-2/ Now you can own a set! :wink:

I know what car needs them, thoughā€¦

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Letā€™s suppose you donā€™t put premium in your tank and I have a car that requires premium. I siphon gas out of your tank in the middle of the night expecting premium for my car.
The lower octane gas I siphoned from your tank knocks a hole in the piston of my carā€™s engine. I will call my attorney and sue you for damage.

If youā€™re siphoning gas out of peopleā€™s tanks in the middle of the night, your attorney is probably the Public Defender, and they generally donā€™t get involved with civil cases. :wink:

I probably wouldnā€™t buy tires from Wal-Mart. Even some of their name-brand tires are models that are unique to Walmart (and sometimes Samā€™s Club as well) that are made to Wal-Martā€™s desired price and carry a Wal-Mart warranty, but not a manufacturer-backed warranty. To me that sends up some red flags that corners were likely cut in their construction/design.

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@shadowfax. I probably wouldnā€™t get anyplace with a civil suit in Judge Judyā€™s Court.

Naaaa, Triedaq would hire a fixer, like all the other rich guys do. :blush:

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Speaking of stealing fuel, when I was in high school I worked for a mechanic mowing the lawn around his house and shop. He heated his shop with a coal stove and there was coal pile outside the shop. He couldnā€™t believe the amount of coal he was burning. He happened to look out in the wee hours of the morning and saw a neighbor from across the street load up his wheelbarrow with coal and wheel it across the street. I asked my mechanic friend what he did. ā€œI ordered more coal. I wasnā€™t going to let the family be coldā€. The neighbor had been laid off and had too much pride to ask for help.

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The total price for 4 of those Unicorn Creation tires was $540.
I recently paid only about $100 more for a set of Michelin Premier tires, and that included lifetime rotation and balancing, as well as a road hazard warranty.
:thinking:

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Yeah, that one threw me for a loop. Why am I going to pay near-premium prices for some off-brand Iā€™ve never heard of?

Though if I owned that Mustang, Iā€™dā€¦ No, if I owned that Mustang my wife would put me in an asylum. :wink:

I had a similar though less expensive experience. We took my daughter and her friends to Chuck Cheese for pizza, games and the animatronic show. After pizza, we hit the games and show. I happened to walk near our table and saw a woman with two young children eating our pizza. I wanted to take it home, but thought better of it. If she had to eat leftovers at Chucky Cheese to feed her children, I wasnā€™t going to get in the way. A very sad experience that has stuck with me even 25 years later.

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To be honest, although I would never buy tires from Wal-Mart, I have purchased ā€œoff-brandā€ tires, and they were actually decent tires. When I had my previous Caravan, the one which was destroyed in an accident a couple years ago, I bought a set of Champiro VP-1 tires for it. The Champiro tires were made in China, and cost about $300 for the set, but they actually handled well, rain or shine. These were 14" tires, btw.

One of our warehouse workers has Ling Long tires on his mopar . . . I think itā€™s a Charger

It cracks me up when tires have pictures of animals on them, such as Lions and Scorpions :laughing:

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I wouldnā€™t buy Walmart tires on a bet. Especially LingLong.

The 4 rubber patches are the only things standing between the driver and death. Iā€™m not trusting my life to a $52 lump of rubber and string from a factory that also makes cheap shoes and seat cushion foam.

Cheap tires are no bargain.

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I may have told this story here before, but itā€™s a tire story so Iā€™ll chip in w/the others. One of my fellow co-workers here at a Silicon Valley hi-tech firm owned founderā€™s stock, and once the company became successful & the stock went public he instantly became a multi-millionaire. Tens of millions. But he was middle-class income before & had just come into the stock money and hadnā€™t adapted to the situation, still retained the typical engineerā€™s view of things, thinking he needed to be ultra-efficient & save money at every opportunity. If you ever read those Ann Landers newspaper columns (if they still exist), usually when a wife writes in about her engineer husband, the complaint is that the engineer-husband is cheap. Doesnā€™t apply to all engineers, but to quite a few in my experience. Anyway, maybe a year after he became wealthy I see this co-worker at Costco one Saturday morning; heā€™s taken the shiny Mercedes to get new tires at Costco. And cheap tires at that. :wink: When he saw me, he said hello, but looked a little embarrassed ā€¦ lol ā€¦

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Hereā€™s an opportunity to do a test. OP could alternate tankfuls of regular and of premium. Figure the MPG. Consider the acceleration performance and other drivability aspects. Learn from the results of the experiment and report back.

After many alternating tankfuls, if there are differences for him and his driving style, let others know. That would be better than ongoing specuulaton.

@George_San_Jose1 The only difference between the newly rich engineer and me , if I came into a lot of money, is that I wouldnā€™t be driving a Mercedes.
I was teaching my last classes back in the spring of 2011 just before I retired. Just before class began, several of the students were talking to me about what I would do if I won the lottery which was up in the tens of millions of dollars. My reply: ā€œThe first thing I would do is buy a college or university and run it the way it should be run. Then, if there is any money left over, I would trade my 1978 Oldsmobile for a 1991 or 1992 carā€.
If I came into a lot of money, I might buy a Mazda Miata, todayā€™s equivalent of the MG Midgets that I liked driving when I was in my twenties, but couldnā€™t afford.
In some ways, I found it more satisfying when I could do my own maintenance and minor repairs to keep my car running; when I repaired my own television and high fidelity equipment and did most of the repairs around the house. It gave me a sense of control.

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