I was working on an electronic shock system for a BMW a number of years ago. The car came with Michelins, Continentals or Dunlops from the factory. I was looking for the best combination with the system I was developing to demonstrate to BMW. They wouldn’t even look at the car if it was not equipped with their preferred tires so I bought 3 sets to try out.
The Michelins were the quietest and softest riding tire with decent handling. Not race tires but decent. The Dunlops handled measurably better (higher lateral G’s, faster turn-in) but rode hard. Impact strips just hammered the car. And they were noisy, really noisy on sun-burned Arizona roads. The Continentals were clearly middle of the road. OK ride, OK handling, OK noise.
We showed the car with Michelins. The electronic shocks helped handling but did essentially nothing for noise. It was an easy choice.
Bridgestone, hands down. In our fleet is a 2005 Merc Mariner, which has very poor road-noise isolation. A number of years ago, I noticed that CR had rated Bridgestone tires highly for traction, wear, etc., so I put on a set. After about 25K miles, I couldn’t stand the noise anymore, and went back to Michelin, my old standby. I have not varied from Mich at any time since. The one caveat is that Mich’s do get progressively noisy as they harden with time, but when they get to that point (5 - 6 years old in our hot TX climate) they start to lose wet traction anyway, so it is time to replace regardless of tread depth.
We now have a new Outback, which (to my dismay) came with Bridgestones. They are reasonably quiet for now, but the O’back is a very quiet-riding car, so we’ll have to see what happens as time passes.
On my 96 Jeep Cherokee it came with Goodyear Wranglers AT/S tires. I didn’t realize how noisy they were until I replaced them with Michelin LTXs. My next set on that car were Bridgestone Duelers which were equally as quiet as the Michelin’s.
Although I am not a fan of Bridgestone tires, the noise level of my last set of B’stones was not the problem.
The major problem was that these so-called All-Season tires had such incredibly poor winter traction that they were actually hazardous on winter road surfaces.
My first Outback had OEM Michelins, and those tires provided very good winter traction.
My second Outback had OEM Bridgestone RE-92 tires, and it was because those tires were so lousy in winter conditions that I first became interested in having a set of winter tires.
In addition to poor winter traction, their resistance to hydroplaning was substandard, and the handling was just so-so.
After repairing the 3rd puncture of those B’stones, I decided to replace them with (technically) cheaper BF Goodrich tires, even though the B’stones still had ~6/32 on their treads.
The “cheaper” BF Goodies were superior to the more pricey B’stones in every way, including winter traction, but since I had already bought a set of Michelin Arctic Alpin winter tires, of course I switched over to the winter tires for a few months each year.
If my next new car comes with Bridgestones, I will try to keep an open mind and to be objective, but if they turn out to be as mediocre as my former B’stones or those damned Contis, it will result in another early switch to Michelins of some sort.
My 1991 Jeep Cherokee came with Goodyear Wrangler ATs. The were noisy but I just accepted it, as they were All Terrain tires on a Jeep. They unfortunately/fortunately lasted over 80,000 miles. The replacement BF Goodrich AT tires were much quieter and performed as well or better.
Since this thread is about tire noise I did not comment that the worthless OEM Bridgestones on my 2002 Mitsubishi Eclipse would roll onto the sidewalls during much less than aggressive cornering. I checked online and a tire/wheel calculator gave me a perfect match for my 1991 Mazda RX-7 225/50/16 Toyo summer performance tires on American Racing wheels. As an experiment I swapped. The Eclipse was a totally different handling car. I was still cautious as I was learning FWD. I ended up purchasing BF Goodrich 205/60/15 TAs for the Eclipse which were 100 times better than the noisy ill handling OEM Bridgestones.
I used BF Goody’s on all my vehicles for many years and was always very pleased with them. Unfortunately, they’re hard to find in my current car’s size.
Quiet tires become noisy tires after a number of miles because of poor maintenance, neglected rotation schedule and under inflation. Some wear patterns become so severe I can hear and feel them in the parking lot with customers cars, it feels like I am riding on sprockets rather than tires.
Some of the tires mentioned I am familiar with and they are quiet from beginning to end.
Some can’t remember the model tire they had, that is like asking what is the worst fuel economy you have experienced? That would be my uncle’s Ford (decade and model unknown).
Well you got me to go out and measure the tread on my tires. They’re down to 6/32. Still OK but I’m wondering if I should think about new ones before winter.
A typical brand new all-season tire has 9 to 10 thirty-seconds of tread. Unless the roads where you are get really bad (in which case you should have winter tires anyway), or the tires are summer tires, 6/32 should be fine. I change mine when the wear bars get obvious, which is about 3/32 to 4/32 on all-season tires. When I look out the window and the weather is bad, I yawn and pour another cup of coffee.