I don’t have to answer anything to anyone! What I say is gold, Jerry, gold!
As a busy tire dealer for 7+ years I saw lots of tires. It’s all about compound and carcass design. Tread design might be 25% of wet performance, but I even doubt that. Tread design is more about marketing and mitigating road noise.
GY do test well at consumer reports – and they are often good tires out of the shoot. But C/R doesn’t know its ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to tires. C/R tries to simulate tire wear by shaving the tire. Yes, why would 30,000 miles of heat cycles & UV matter? They once named the Dunlop D60 (I think that was it) a top pick in part because of their wet weather testing. I probably sold thousands of that tire with a different name (private label) and wet was a constant complaint. So they fail at that too. For the record I think Dunlops were great bang-for-the-buck tires, but that was pre-GY owning them. Not sure now.
My opinion of GY is their compounding does not wear well. I took off many GY tires with good tread (>50%) that had become nightmares in the rain and cold, and even warm weather performace had suffered. They were often hard as rocks. That is one of the reasons I generally like Michelins, I think they are easily the most consistent tires throughout the life of the tire. In most cases the way a 75% worn Michelin performs is perceivably the same as one 10% worn. I cannot say that for GY. If you plan to run the tire into the ground in 3 years a GY is a fine choice. If you plan on running it past there go elsewhere. I’ve been out of it for a while now, but I doubt that has changed much.
I’m generalizing brands and every brand has winners and losers but generally that is my thought. And I already told you that you should probably try your best to match your front tires by staying w/i the same brand, as carcass design and compounding will probably be more consistent. Buy 2 Firestones (I’ll even say Bridgestone as well, but I preferred f/s tires over b/s) or do 4 new ones. But what the hell do I know I’ve only been factory trained on these things – Michelin is in a lovely part of SC, BTW. And you love to complicate stuff.
I’d like to hear Al’s input on this I bet it is similar.