I AM IN THE MARKET FOR NEW SUMMER TIRES AND CANT BE BREAKING THE BANK. I WON'T BE USING IT ON THE TRACK. I DO LIKE TO DRIVE AGRESSIVLY BUT I DO HAVE A 20 MILE COMMUTE EACH WAY OF HIGHWAY DRIVING TO AND FROM WORK DAILY. THESE TIRES LOOKED PRETTY GOOD ESPECIALLY THE PRICE AND THE REVIEWS THEY HAVE RECEIVED.

DOES ANYONE HAVE AN EXPERIENCES WITH THESE. I AM LOOKING FOR SOMETHING WITH A HARDER COMPOUND FOR BETTER LIFE. RIGHT NOW THE KUMHO ECSTAS ARE ON MY CAR NOW AND I HATE THEM FOR BEING TOO SOFT ON MY CONNECTICUT COUNTRY BACK ROADS


On a side note, I was wondering if I could go one size wider on the stock MS6 wheels. Would it work first of all and would there be any negative affects on the car?

Mine just got in today in 235/40/18 to go on my rx8 wheels. I'll post here to let ya know how they are... but I'm coming from stock, so they're going to fucking rock almost no matter what.

the V12 is too new to have alot of data on it. but C&D loved it, how it will wear is unknown, yes you can go to a 225 without too many issues.

Keep that caps lock off

yea i was at work and everything at work stays caps. I spoke to a guy at town fair tire which is a place i wont have them install them. But he said if i go one size wider I will def get more grip, but will also get worse gass mileage. this is my daily driver so gas mileage is sometimes key. is this true about the loss of gas mileage. what else would be affected

Minuses - Noisier, worse gas mileage, greater chance to hydroplane, shittier in snow, tire longevity questionable without proper alignment (SPC Balljoints)

Pluses - more grip, shorter stopping distances, better in the wet (to a point, see above)

looks like i will stay stocker size

Noisier - ehh maybe, but thats across the same tire, but across two different tires thats impossible to say really, it could easily be quieter just cause that tire is a real quiet tire...

Worse gas milage - again, even if the tire is wider it may be lighter in which case you may get better gas milage, either way the difference is prolly not quantifiable for the daily driver...

Hydroplaning - again across the same tire yes wider = better odds, but with a different tire its tough to say, and again the difference is prolly pretty small

Shittier in snow - well duh you dont run UHP or extreeme performance tires in snow... thats like saying dick chaney is a worse playmate candidate than james earl jones...

Longevity, again compared to stock (UTG 120) just about ANYTHING is going to last longer....

I have a set of these in 235/45/17 to be mounted on my 17x7.5 Rotas - the price was great (onlinetires.com). I'm worried about the wear a bit, but I figure they can't be too much worse than the Kumho SPT's werer (I know the treadwear of the SPT's is higher, but they wear quick!)

As soon as I get them mounted and a few miles, I'll post a review.

Kevin M.
'04 MTX Wagon

Went from the Kumho Escta to the V12 and i love them. I cant tell on the wear since i have only had them on for a little bit. I got a good deal on them from tire-easy.com. If you dont mind dealing with a german company, i ordered mine and had them on my door step in 3 days for $50 shipping. I like them a lot. I was worried about the wear as well but i thought that it could not be worse than my Kumho's. So i bought them.

Actually, the Ventus V12 evo has been pretty thoroughly wrung out in a couple of in-depth tests by German enthusiast magazines. The Car and Driver test was a very strange one, beginning with the headline. While it is common for headlines to be written by someone other than the person who writes the story, the headlineof that story seems to have been written by omeone who did not even read the story.

In the German tests, the Ventus V12 evo turned in the shortest braking distances of all the tires tested, both on dry pavement and on wet pavement, impressive by itself, but more so considering the competition, which included some of the best tire models in the world. Its only less than top tier showuing was lateral grip on wet surfaces.

The guy is full of kaka.

At any given inflation pressure, the width of the tire does not affect the size of the contact patch, only its shape. A tire with a contact patch that is wider but shorter front to back is more easily deflected from rotation in the direction it originally was pointed; that is, a wider, shorter, patch reduces the directional stability of the tire, so that input from the steering wheel is quicker, but at the same time, the tire is more easily deflected off course by imperfections in the pavement. Obviously, this is more important at the front end of the car than the rear where (with a few exceptions) the tires are "locked" in a straight-ahead (relative to the vehicle body) position by the geometry of the rear suspension.

Under lateral forces, the shape of the contact patch will change from oval to sort of a tear-drop shape, the nature of the change affected by the tire's internal construction. In those circumstances, an initially wider, shorter front-to-back, contact patch often will distort in a manner more favorable to maintaining grip than a contact patch that was originally narrower and longer front-to-back; but, again, this is dependent on the tire's internal construction. A very wide tire with very stiff sidewalls and stiff under-tread belts can lift off the pavement like a door rotating on its hinge, creating a very abrupt transition and an unduly thrilling sideways ride.

Gas mileage is a function of the tire's rolling resistance, which is affected far more by its internal construction, the hardness of its tread compound, and especially inflation pressure than it is by the ratio of width to length of the contact patch.

We have a pair of new Ventus V12 evo tires (215/50R17) here that will be mounted Thursday to replace a pair of Yokohama ADVAN Sport (205/55R17) tires that have reached end-of-life. The ADVAN Sport is a superb tire, arguably the best tire in the world that is made in a size to fit the Mazda6, and they have served me well, including a time when I got caught out in an unpredicted winter storm in the mountains when, fortunately, the highway department got the roads nominally clear in a hurry, but the after-storm sunlight that melted the residual snow, combined with ambient temperatures well below freezing, created a lot of black ice where shadows fell. The ADVAN Sports handled those conditions like a champ. It will be interesting to see how a new guy on the block compares to an established champion.

The Ventus V12 evo tires will go on a Mazda6 Sportwagon that already has almost-new (two months old) Pirelli P Zero Nero tires at the rear. Normally, I would mount the newer tires in the rear, but the Pirellis have effectively all their original tread, and a softer tread compound (Treadwear 220 vs. 280 for the Ventus V12 evo) and the Ventus V12s have a directional tread pattern which might have some utility in the front-mounted position against standing water but which provides no advantage at the rear, while the P Zero Neros have an asymmetrical internal construction (reflected in their tread pattern) that provides advantage at all four mounting positions, so each model of tire will be playing to its strength.

We had some, erm, interesting experiences with tires-easy.com. Tires-easy is the North American subsidiary of the German Delticom, and the subsidiary's headquarters is right here in Portland (Oregon), so I sent an email to the company asking if there was a possibility that I could physically pick up any tires that I ordered and save shipping charges. There was no response in my mail in-box for several days, so I went to my spam quaramtine, and found a response. Tire-easy uses a server in Romania for its email system, and my ISP had diverted the message to the quarantine as probable spam because such a high percentage of Romanian-originated email directed to U.S. servers is spam. (The answer to my question -- from a Portland-based person who sent the email through Romania to a Portland email address -- was that the tires are shipped from a warehouse that is not in the Portland area.) So I white-listed the Delticom Romanian email server's address and proceeded to order the tires on-line. But I received no confirmation email that the order had been received. Looked in the spam quarantine again, and there was the confirmation. A different Eastern European server.

And weight.

Also check out the Sumitomo HTR Z III's...

I ordered a set the other day from tirerack.com Price was less than $100/tire and I get a $50 mail in rebate. Only did it because I lost a yokohama avid to a piece of metal and they are about done anyway. I might get them installed this weekend. I know the tread life will be less but I saved about $100 for the set of 4 by not going with the avids again. Excluding the $50 rebate.

I'll post my findings after a few weeks.

I dunno, i think what the guy said is fair, and you pretty much backed it up... the change in shape does tend to allow better grip, that's pretty well established....

As far as mileage, it is not unfair to say a wider tire across the same make will be heavier and thus, im sure minutely, your MPG will go down from rotational mass gain, and i am sure traction set aside it will slow your acceleration in an immesurable manner as well, but all of these things are pretty much non issues for a street car going 10mm wider.

I have them and love them. keep in mind these are summer tires. They stick more than the falkens I had, and make less noise. I haven't tried them in the rain yet, but I am 100% sure they will perform as good as on dry road

I got them installed on saturday and so far they seem ok. Tire noise is no different then the avid's I had, I guess they feel a little more sturdy in the corners, havent really had a chance to test them out yet.

Edit.... Holy shit.. the mechanic was an idiot and installed the passanger side tires backwards..... how fucked could/am I? I got it done in LI and have no plans of paying for someone elses mistake

We have put a little over 500 miles on the Hankook Ventus V12s now (hey, it's summer), and some things are coming into focus. The Hankooks, which have a load index of 95XL, are inflated to 36 psi, which provides a load capacity of 1356 lb., equivalent to the load capacity of the former ADVAN Sport 205/55R17 tires, which have a load index of 91SL, when the latter are inflated to 32 psi. We had been running the ADVAN Sports at 35 psi, which could account for some of the minute differences noted below.

We had one damp, but not really wet, day in the past week, so our impressions so far are based on dry performance. The ADVAN Sport tires were truly outstanding on wet roads, and the Hankooks have returned outstanding results in tests conducted by the German magazine Autobild on wet roads, when pitted against such tires as the Goodyear Eagle Asymmetrical and the ContiSportContact 3, so I am not expecting the Hankooks to embarrass themselves here when the rains do come.

Are the Hankook Ventus V12 tires better in any performance aspect than the Yokohama ADVAN Sport tires that they replaced? No. That hardly should be surprising, as the ADVAN Sports run almost twice as many dollars per tire, and have a softer (Treadwear 180) compound than the Ventus V12s (Treadwear 280).

Are the Ventus V12 tires significantly worse in any performance respect than the ADVAN Sport tires that they replaced? Again, no; which makes the Hankooks an outstanding value.

What separates the handling of the Hankooks (so far) from the ADVAN Sports are two fuzzy subjective factors. The first is the more difficult to explain, but the Hankooks feel a little bit "floatier", as if the front wheels were riding an inch higher off the road than the ADVAN Sports were. (In fact, the 205/55R17 ADVAN Sports had a very slightly greater overall diameter than the 215/50R17 Ventus V12s do.) Another way of saying the same thing is that the feel through the steering wheel is not quite as direct with the Ventus V12s as it was with the ADVAN Sports. A "hands-off" test (releasing the steering wheel and observing how well the car continues to track in a straight line) is influenced a lot by the road surface, so it is difficult to compare sets of tires on different roads, but the Hankooks have performed very well when traffic conditions have allowed me to test this aspect. Again, the ADVAN Sports were excellent in the same kind of test, and it seems as if I may have to grab the steering wheel to make a minor correction a bit sooner with the Ventus V12s than I did with the ADVAN Sports, but even if my perception is correct, the differences are very minor.

The second subjective factor is how I instinctively set up the car to go through the twisties. We have several sharp unbanked or minimally banked S curves on our hill and part of the gas of the ADVAN Sports was the daily exercise of seeing how closely I could navigate the curves to keep the wheels a uniform distance from the painted center line on the street. That is, I would enter the S cuve with the left front tire one foot to the right of the painted line, trace the first half of the S-curve exactly parallel to the line, then switch directions for the second half of the S-curve, continuing to maintain the left front wheel exactly the same distance from the line all the way through. With the Ventus V12s, my brain's safety check is telling me to enter the S-curve a little wider from the line, turn in a little farther so that I nearly shave the line at the midpoint of the first half, exit that first curve a bit wider, and then again shave the bowl at the midpoint of the second curve. This is more of an unconscious reaction than a conscious one, but right now -- I am not necessarily familiar with the Hankooks yet and may just be overly cautious as to their limits -- it feels uncomfortable to do the one-foot-trace as I used to do with the ADVAN Sports.

I just put a set of these on last night. i have maybe 20mi on the car since, but so far i like em quite a bit.

I, too, have a set of these on my car. Stock size. I haven't really pushed the car, but they are definitely quieter than stock tires. I usually take corners and curves a bit hard and haven't had any squealing. Wear seems to be good so far.

Well, I am forced to buy them now instead of the spring. My current set has less than 4/32's which in CT is illegal. tomorow aqt noon I will be rockn new rubbers

http://www.hankooktireusa.com/ventusv12evo...Test_062209.pdf

There are so many 13th chimings of the crazy clock in that write-up, I am unsure whether I would trust it.

However, the Hankook Ventus V12 evo has done exceptionally well in a number of recent enthusiast magazine tire tests in Europe, especially this Autobild comparative test (in German). The Ventus V12 evo flat-out won the braking ("Bremsen") part of the tests, both wet and dry, against 16 other tires, which included some of the best tires in the world

And see this English summary of a German test the majority of which is not available on-line:_ Auto Zeitung 2009. Be sure to scroll down to the reporting on the "raw data" results, which may be more revealing than the subjectively adjusted results reported higher up the page.

I got my Hancook tires on. They are def nice but havent had a chance to truely test them as my car is in the garage with a broken chain. Not too happy. But my bike is out and my primary means. Of course the damn thing had to break on a loong weekend. I am looking forward to getting that fixed and going for a nice cruise in the car

If you can MEASURE on-center feel with a computer, then I'll start to believe you.

Huh?
Whatever you're smoking, try a different brand.

We:

1. Provided links to two pages of European tire tests, and
2. As to one of the links, we specifically urged the reader to, "Be sure to scroll down to the reporting on the "raw data" results, which may be more revealing than the subjectively adjusted results reported higher up the page." _ (The raw data results exclude the subjective factors.)
3. Did not refer to "on-center feel" and -- so far as I can determine -- neither of the links we provided referred to "on-center feel" either, though perhaps one of the links within the links that we provided may have taken you to a further site where somebody else may have referred to "on-center feel."

We did not ask you to believe us, and frankly, we do not care whether or not you believe the German and English magazines' comparison test results; we merely pointed to access portals for more comprehensive objective tests than the Car and Driver test affords. BTW, computers do not measure; computers manipulate data of measurements done in almost all cases by something other than computers.

Whence comes your hostility?

I don't know what you're reading but I am no being hostile. But if you think numbers can describe the feel of a tire better than a person, you're crazy. Yes they can tell you braking distance in wet and dry (which C&D did), gs (which c&D did), and track times (which c&D did)... but that's not the whole story. Where's the number that tells you a Kumho SPT gets greasy? There isn't one. So unless you can read German, read teh C&D artice as it will tell you WHY a tire is better than another, not just show you a number.

O.k., I understand now where you are coming from. I read your previous posting to be against subjective measurements, and for metrics-only; now, I see that you come from exactly the other side.. If you like fuzzy subjective evaluations, see post #19 in this thread by somebody posting under the screen name posttosh (oui, c'est moi) in this thread on August 22.

However, I do find the Car and Driver test very flawed -- as we described the write-up in an earlier post, full of the 13th chimings of a crazy clock.

Here is just one example of what we see as a flaw; maybe you will agree, maybe you will disagree. Except under extreme conditions, which were not replicated in the Car and Driver tests, most modern tires will finish fairly close in dry conditions at low speeds. In the dry braking test, for instance, Car and Driver's test measured a difference between the best (shortest stopping) BF Goodrich tire and the ninth-place Nitto tire of only seven feet in an emergency stop from 50 mph. That is about the distance from the front bumper to the outside rear view mirror on a Mazda6; if the cars were traveling next to each other, and the brakes were all applied at exactly the same moment, the cars would come to a stop with the worst-stopping car just a nose ahead of the best-stopping car. More significantly for this discussion, however, seven feet is about half the difference in stopping distance between the first (Hankook) and ninth (Falken) place tires in the wet braking test.

At the rather short distances imposed by the small Tire Rack facility (the German and English tests were conducted on real test tracks and measured braking from 100 km/h, about 62 mph), it is hard to separate tires' performance in the dry, and the wet surface is necessary to show significant differences on the small test track.

Faced with this limitation, however, Car and Driver assigned 40 percent of its rating to the small dry differences and only 20 percent to the more significant wet differences. That editorial decision had to be made to minimize the possibility that an advertiser would be shown up as seriously deficient, as emphasizing the tests where the scores are bunched and de-emphasizing the tests where the scores are spread tends to squish overall test scores closer together. That is why we like to see the raw data, not just the bottom line.

I think you'll find that they explain their weighting to bias towards dry since they were upper level performance summer tires which sacrifice wet traction the higher level you go.... i think they're being more realistic of their test segment. Also, they showed wet braking because, well, it rains.

Jesus.... this thread has turned into a pointless bitching session. 1 Thing I have noticed is that they are far cheaper then a lot of other guys.

FWIW - I hope to be getting a g35 soon and a set of 4 was like $650 including shipping. Considering the next cheapest set is $1000 id say its a decent deal

It is simply untrue, false, misinformation, disinformation that tires "sacrifice wet traction the higher you go." It is true that there is a separate category of tires designed for high speed, high temperature operation (street-legal racing tires), and tires of that description -- such as the Yokohama ADVAN Neova -- usually are one-trick ponies; Tire Rack, to which Car and Driver was beholden for the test, calls them "extreme performance" tires. In fact, the Car and Driver test group was explicitly of "economy" tires. It happened that one "extreme performance" tire made it under the $140 filter that Car and Driver imposed, the Dunlop Direzza Z1 Star Spec. Remarkably, the Star Spec fared o.k. in both wet and dry braking (probably reflecting high ambient temperatures at the time of the testing). The other tires were not in the "extreme performance" category.

Which leads into more Car and Driver misinformation:

Well, no. With the possible exception of the Dunlop Z1 Star Spec, none of the tires in the Car and Driver test were "designated exclusively for summer driving." The Car and Driver copy writer (Dave Vanderwerp) simply has spent time reading advertising claims rather than doing his homework, and is showing his ignorance. The five categories (yes, we, too, used the same word above) to which Vanderwerp alludes are a marketing invention, not definitions of the Rubber Manufacturer's Association. And the only one of those categories that trades off wet performance is the "extreme performance" category -- but the "dry-road capability" that the extreme performance tires maximize is the ability to run at very high temperatures; it is not an increase in dry-road cornering ability, dry road braking, or dry-road rolling resistance. The "extreme" in "extreme performance" tires, in other words, is heat, not performance. The kind of tires that Car and Driver included in the test is the kind of tires that will give the driver the best performance in the spring and fall, as well as the summer; those tires are _not_ (snicker) "exclusively for summer" driving.

Again:
The last four words in that sentence are a howl. "His leg strength struck us as having sufficient chops. . . for an NFL offensive tackle." The group of tires that Car and Driver calls summer tires is the kind that has the very best wet performance of any tires that one can purchase for a passenger car. Had all-season tires been included in the test group, it is likely that none of the all-season tires would have done as well in wet braking as the ninth-place Falkens.

And while we are on a roll, look at this statement:

BFGoodrich is a subsidiary of Michelin, and Nitto is a subsidiary of Toyo, but Dunlop is not a subsidiary of Goodyear. The Dunlop brand is jointly owned by Sumitomo and Goodyear; broadly speaking, Dunlop tires made in Europe are made by Goodyear or its Fulda subsidiary, and Dunlop tires made in Asia are made by Sumitomo; the Dunlop Direzza Sport Z1 Star Spec tires are made in Japan. (At one time, Goodyear owned some shares of Sumitomo stock,but we do not know where that stock ownership stands now.) Again, it appears that Vanderwerp failed to do his homework before going to his word processor.

Basically I don't care which tire company owns which, or what category a tire is in, or why. I care that a summer tire does well and I want it to do well primarily in the dry. BUT mother nature being how she is- it will rain, so I'd like to know that information as well. It won't snow, so leave that info and those tires out (they call tires that handle occasional snow an all-season tire). Then test them all, the less expensive ones because I am not rich, and get back to me.

And they did.

If you want to pick about their test method or about how they described a tire, feel free. I've already got a set of k110s at home waiting for an autocross and next summer, and some ASXs on my car for this nipple-hardening weather that's incoming. And I'm not stressing about how they tested, because other members have told me how they seem to like the k110 so far, without numbers.

i'll be getting a set of these soon for the last month they'll probably see on the car.

That would be post #23 in this thread?


That would be post #19 in this thread?

There is no reason to care who made which tire, other than as an indicator whether the person who wrote the article that said who made which tire knew what he was writing about; if he was wrong about one thing, or two things, or three things . . . perhaps you should take what he writes about a fourth thing with a grain of salt.

I don't understand what you are pointing out. C&D agrees with the Germans that the k110 is a good tire. I don't know how you made an argument out of that.

Indeed Car and Driver did agree with the German test, for the most part. And we personally agreed, too, that the Hankook Ventus V12 evo is a good tire, to the extent that we bought them for our own Mazda6. So why, when we added links to the German tests to supplement the link to the Car and Driver test that you posted, did you get (post #26) so very hostile?

If you think that is hostile, you need to go get a good massage then re-read the post. It wasn't, it isn't, and if you think it is, please stop stating as such.

Gentlemen. This argument has one final recourse. A DUEL, Take 20 paces ,turn and fire. May the best man win!

BAM!

Click to view attachment (See right under Wheel & Tire Packages)

How bad are these tires going to perform in winter weather? I dont have the $$ for another set of tires/wheels for winter?

Personally, I wouldn't even try and use them in temps lower than 45, and DEFINITELY NOT in any snow/sleet/slush-filled roads.

hahaha

And agreed in the cold. Tire companies, from what I've been reading are starting to choose 50 degrees as the switchover point. It's in the 50s here at night sometimes but during the day for an autox I'd definitely use these puppies. (it seems they may whoop ass in rain, too)

Awesome, well thats what I get for saving $150 by buying these over another set of Yokohamas. If I come into any $$ then I will pick up a set of winter tires/wheels. Luckily for me, the ppl in SoJo are such shitty drivers I wouldnt be able to go more than 15mph in slush anyway.

Hopefully my fiancee will have moved in full time w/ me by then and I will take sick days as needed

Time will tell. Here in Portland, we have always found that "summer" tires greatly outperform all-season tires at temperatures down into the mid-30s (F.), which is about as cold as we get around here. We have driven in temperatures below 0° F. on Yokohama ADVANs and Goodyear GS-D3s, and those tires performed more than competently on _cleared_ roads (including occasional small patches of black ice). I have no reason to believe that the Hankook Ventus V12 evos will be any different. Because the tires are good at repelling water, however, they would do very poorly in loose snow. Basically, the better a tire performs on wet roads, the worse it performs in snow, and vice versa. If you are going to drive in snow, you will need another set of tires.

I agree with this too. I find my summer tires perform better year round in Albuquerque weather too. Plenty below 30 mornings and such. Our snow is usually of the sleet/slop variety and they work well in that too. Not until there is snow hard packed on the roads are the summer tires a problem. Tread pattern will have a large effect on your results as well though. I ran the stock RE050's through a lot of sudden heavy winter storms last year at the end of their life. They performed no worse than any all season tire I've ever had on any car.

Posttosh....


that is awesome to hear! My Yokohama Avids sucked in the snow anyway

Lucky you with the weather... we have weeks of in the teens weather. we get snow and it instantly ices on everything. And it does it fast so VDOT has no chance. Then we get a week of 60 degree weather that follows. Virginia is fucked up.

I drove the stock re050's, brand new through the winter. I was scared out of my mind in the snow. No traction to go, no traction to stop...
I ran falken all season last year and felt a LOT safer.