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July 23, 2026 By alex martinez
If we see one more viral post from someone who has never touched a track telling people not to buy Pirellis because they're trash, we're lining up for a professional slap match.
Tires are big black chunks of rubber backed by insane marketing budgets, and that combination makes them one of the worst things to shop for. Every brand uses the same terms that mean everything and nothing. High silica compound. Okay, sure. Ultra high performance all-season summer tire with winter capabilities and super mountain rated. What in the Bobby Hill does that even mean?
Here's the part the industry doesn't like to talk about: only 17% of tire dealers think the existing tier rankings accurately represent the quality of brands in the marketplace. The other 82% called those rankings inaccurate or useless.
So we built our own. Just like our wheel pyramid, we ranked every tire brand we could get our hands on into four tiers. Some brands might get a touch upset about it. That's fine. We're here to help you modify your car the right way with the right parts, not to protect anyone's marketing budget.
Suppliers rank tire brands by marketing spend, logistics, OE contracts, and dealer support. None of that matters to you, so none of it factored in here. Our pyramid is built on four things:
We're not as microscopic as the dedicated tire review guys (those folks are insanely detailed), but we've found the sleeping bangers and the overrated marketing brands the hard way: by mounting, balancing, and driving on all of them.
If we hurt anyone's feelings, we're sorry. Sort of. You're welcome to disagree, and if you want a deeper dive on any brand here, hit the brand cards throughout this guide.
Four tiers, every brand placed by real experience. The higher the tier, the more of the performance spider graph a brand fills out. The lower the tier, the fewer things it does well. In Tier 4's case, the main skill is being round.
These are the value-focused brands. Typically less (or no) R&D, fewer compound design elements, less actual material in the tire, and fewer sizes. Tires here are good at being tires. They roll. To be clear, Tier 4 doesn't automatically mean a bad brand. It means you get exactly what you pay for.
Uniroyal is the interesting one here. It sits under the Michelin and BFGoodrich family in a lot of ways, but it's positioned exclusively as a value brand. It could probably argue its way to the top of the tier, but if you like to slam your car or act like a silly little idiot on a racetrack, this isn't your brand.
Sumitomo nearly made Tier 3. They've historically been an OEM supplier with some real engineering pedigree, especially outside the US, but it's not quite enough to move them up.
You'll also find drift tires down here, mostly Ironman (and Federal, if you're old enough to remember them before the anti-dumping tariffs). Both do great for drifting because they warm up fast and there's a good chunk of rubber in the mold. After driving on both, we really like what Ironmans can do, and Westlake deserves a special call-out too. The rule of thumb: if it heat cycles well and has a bunch of rubber, it'll make a good drift tire.
Tier 3 brands are mid-premium and performance accessible. Every brand here does one or two things properly well: longevity, a motorsport tire that actually works, a real warranty, or a solid all-season. This is also where most of the brands we sell start, because they're all properly good.
Vogue is a luxury-oriented tire, but they own a niche nobody else takes care of anymore, and they deserve some love for it.
Nankang is making super popular budget track tires like the NS-2R, and the NS-25 is a solid daily option. They're transparently getting better every year and even launched a warranty on some of their tires. The reason they're not higher is consistency. We've mounted plenty of Nankangs over the years and some arrive more out of round than we'd like, which tells us not every tire gets checked on its way out of the factory.
Kenda we love. The KR20A is a glorious 200TW drift tire for cars with 300+ horsepower, and it heat cycles really well. We run Kendas on our own R34. Outside that niche they're still learning how to do it all: a bit loud for normal driving, and wet conditions are not their friend.
Nexen is great for daily drivers and budget builds, especially on the GR86 platform. We even drifted on the SU1s and enjoyed them, though they're a little pricey to just burn off at a drift day.
Cooper is a tougher one, but they've still got good options if you need older sizes and styles. The Coopers we ran on our Z never gave us a single issue.
Kumho sits at the top of Tier 3, and you could argue they belong in Tier 2. They've launched four new tires this year alone, locked in OE partnerships with Hyundai, Nissan, VW, and Genesis, added a warranty to the Ecsta line, and the V730 is a great performance summer tire as long as you never see water. They keep investing, and they keep getting better.
Fair warning: every brand in this tier would tell you they're Tier 1, and some of our friends on the tire side are absolutely going to text us about this. Brands are here because nearly every one has earned premium, enthusiast-level trust. They're well established, they run active motorsport programs across multiple disciplines, they do their own independent R&D (some of which we've seen firsthand), and their warranties justify the higher cost. If you want the best value per dollar in tires, shop this tier.
General starts the list because it's under the Continental family. The G-Max RS has massively impressed us on and off the track. We've run them on 250 horsepower rear-wheel-drive Skylines and 600 horsepower M5s and they don't let up in either. Great warranty, solid price point, and they're made in the same factories as Continental.
Both are more niche than broad, but in the aftermarket sports car world these are the semi-race slicks. Absolutely insane tires. Mickey Thompson's street lineup isn't as strong as we'd like it to be, so we'll be testing more of those in 2026. Hoosier is, well, Hoosier. On our Pro Formula Mazda, a lap or two of heat and you could probably drive the thing upside down in a tunnel. Not a street tire. Still a fantastic tire.
Nitto might be one of the most well-rounded enthusiast brands out there. Big SUV performance sizes, squared-off sidewalls, multiple treadwear ratings, and genuinely fantastic compounds. Shout out to the Neo Gen for helping stance kids everywhere, and to the NT555 G2 for just looking sick. Every Nitto looks sick, and to some people that genuinely matters.
The RT615K+ is made with pixie dust and George Clooney's gray hair. It's a borderline perfect street 200TW tire, with standout value and grip for the money, and enough grassroots support to cause a riot if the country ever banned it. We'd love to see Falken in motorsports again, but we'll take the FK510 and RT660 as gifts in the meantime. One heads-up: Falken has a TON of models because each one is so usage-specific. Buy what you need, not what you want.
Toyo shares the same pants as Nitto and carries some real performance heritage. Their consistency is great, the pricing across the model lineup works, and the Extensa HP II is our favorite little Miata tire ever, especially as a daily. Worth knowing: Nitto is being steered enthusiast, Toyo is being steered OE, and that split is intentional. Toyo's OE stuff is fantastic. The R888R looks great, but the design and compound are dated and we wouldn't recommend it. If you want the enthusiast side of that family, go Nitto.
Yokohama is a brand we've spent a ton of time with lately, from the A052s on our 240Z to lapping an R34 GT-R at Fuji Speedway in the cold. The standout is predictability. The compound and the R&D behind it keep the tire's behavior consistent through its entire life.
That same predictability applies to Bridgestone. The RE71RS is basically a flagship: predictable, usable, fantastic value per dollar, great sizes, and continuously invested in. Both Bridgestone and Yokohama also make genuinely good street tires that aren't 200TW track maniac compounds, and a lot of them come with warranties. Use them.
Goodyear is the legacy American brand, and they've been putting in work to get people to know them again. They can be tough to compare against the younger brands that have owned the Tier 2 space, but especially on the street side, you're not going to have a bad time on Goodyears.
Tier 2 is where the value per dollar lives. Tier 1 is for brands that do well at almost every element of how you'd rate a tire: wet, dry, winter, sizing, global distribution, and continuous R&D. Each of these three sits here for a slightly different reason, and each has its own unique R&D funnel feeding race data straight into street tires.
Pirelli doesn't get a ton of attention in America, but globally they're huge, and their real superpower is sizing. They build tires for cars almost nobody else covers, and they do it well. They're an OE supplier for a long list of high-end exotics, and R&D from a little motorsport called Formula 1 flows into their high-end street tires. We ran the Winter Sottozero 3 for two winters and it was one of the best winter tires we've ever used. The catch: you're paying for the Pirelli name. Buy Pirelli because you need it, not because you want it. Plenty of Tier 2 brands cover the wants.
And no, they're not here because we have a great relationship with them. Continental keeps proving they're a properly good tire across the board: street, track, and race series you may not have heard of, like WRL. The support system is the standout. Warranties, roadside assistance, replacement programs, and trial programs where you can hand the tires back if you don't like them. We've watched their US quality control in person, and the number of tires they reject and rebalance before anything ships is honestly impressive. Less weight needed to balance a tire means better quality assurance, and it's why a wheel and tire package from us doesn't show up needing six ounces of weight slapped on the barrel. The ExtremeContact Sport 02 and the DWS06 Plus are two of our favorites, and their newest VikingContact winter tire has grip our brains are still processing.
The internet loves to talk trash about popular things, and Michelin catches strays for exactly that reason. Ignore it. The Pilot Sport family is where Michelin pours its love for people like us. The Cup 2, the 4S, and the newest Pilot Sport tires showing up on OE BMWs are all fantastic. They're a dedicated tire supplier for IMSA and the World Endurance Championship, and the data from Daytona and Le Mans goes directly into the street tires you and I buy. They build tires globally, tune them per region, and fill out the entire performance spider graph better than anyone. That's why they're number one.
Remember the spider graph from our Ultimate Guide to Tires. A Tier 2 tire can absolutely beat a Tier 1 tire at one specific thing. That doesn't make it the better tire. Being great at one point of the graph is different from filling out the whole thing, and tires have to perform in every condition you'll actually hit. When you pay for the best, you want the tire that does the best everywhere.
And if a supplier or a viral Instagram account disagrees with our pyramid, good. Rank them yourself and send it to us. We ranked these for you, not for the brands.
We only sell the brands we'd run on our own builds. Start with your budget, be honest about how you actually drive, and pick the tier that fits. If you need help figuring out what tire size your car, SUV, or performance SUV needs, shoot us a message and we'll sort you out.
My name is Alex, or Alex Martini (Alex.Martini__) and I love building unreliable cars. From track, road, drag and drift, there really isn't a motorsport I love. PS if you're reading this, just know that we've got some WILD builds coming for MartiniWorks that we're really excited to share with you :)
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