Been quoted apx £120 for Continental tyres or as a cheaper alternative Coopers for apx £70 are Coopers ok, or if any one has any other suggestions would be apreaciated as the Continentals seem a tad expensive Cheers

Have you tried one of the online retailers like blackcircles or mytires. If you type it in google; they normally have lower prices just search for the size you want.

David

Hello,

Depends what money you are prepared to pay, and range of tyre.

Personally I had two sets of Continental Contact 2 on the front, both had to be changed at 15,000 miles.

Shopped around for the second set of two, and threw one garage price at another and finally paid £165 for two Conti's, all-in.

But, last time at 30,000 miles, I bought the cheapest and nastiest tyre's that met car specs, for the front two tyres, and paid a total of £72 all-in.

Tyre's gave less road noise and grip was slightly better than the Conti's when new.

Time will tell if grip slacken's and mileage not achieved.

Original tyre's Continental Contact 2 on rear of car from new 2005, now over 40,000 miles, and beginning to perish with 3m/m tread wear left.

Will seriously consider buying cheap and nasty tyre's when they reach 2m/m.

Got even nastier tyres this time called "Roadstone" £60 (for two), all-in price, and fitted, can anyone beat that !!! if you dare/can.. LOL

Car feels as though I'm glued to the road, didn't expect such a dramatic difference compared to a top brand name as "Continental"

Ian. 24/07/2009 (Updated)

Good Luck.

Edited 24 July, 200916 yr by giandougl
Latest Update

Check out the Autocar report on cheap tyres if you want a shock. It was in the 28/01/09 issue and here is the final conclusion "We were expecting the bargain tyres in this test to fall short of the Continental reference rubber, but we weren't prepared for how wide the gap was. The Conti easily topped the final rankings but there was little good news below it."

The makes featured (in the order they finished, with their relative scores out of 42) were: Continental (reference-41.5) GT radial (27.5), Nankang (27), Wanli (23.5), Linglong (14), Triangle (13.5).

This report only echoes the results that I have seen in other such studies. Personally I will never fit tyres manufactured by any company other than the big ones on the basis of all these reports.

My personal experience with tyres from Goodyear, Continental, Michelin, Bridgestone, Dunlop is that they all make competent tyres. Best for grip and sportiness have been Goodyear and Bridgestone, and best for wear have been Continental and Michelin. But they've all been safe, which above all is the important thing. Within their ranges they all have a range of different types of tyre from cheap to expensive and from wear-optimised to performance-optimised. Something for everyone, in fact.

Unless you are determined to cut corners to save the last pennies I would really recommend getting tyres from a reputable manufacturer. Your life, and the life of others, is surely worth more than the few pounds you will save. If the cost of tyres is a big issue then drive more gently - they'll last longer and you'll save money on fuel as well.

Just to conclude, I also kept a tyre test from Auto Express (13-09-06 issue) and once again the tyres that scored well were the major brands, while the cheaper ones were resolutely at the bottom of the pile. Comments like "Low levels of grip" (Maxxis), "Not great in our tests" (Marangoni), "Below par across the board" (Toyo) and "Where do we start" (Matador) abound.

There must be literally hundreds of "What tyre?" threads on here...

You don't need to buy the usual brands, in the real world some of them are no better than budgets, I have had Michies fitted I couldn't wait to get rid of they were that bad. What tyres are best will depend on the driver, it's all subjective and down to personal taste (Which is usually what all the other threads conclude)

However...

Favoured tyres in the 205/45/16 (Probably what is on your Fabia) are the Toyo T1r (Good performance, excellent grip and I got 18k out and 2 track days out of a set) for about £75 a corner, GY F1's (Good allrounder albiet with a soft sidewall, look good, quiet, good on fuel, bad in the snow and I got 28k out of a set) about £80 a corner and there are a few others such as Sessantas, Pneros etc.

My current tyre of choice is the Falken Ziex ZE-912 which is £66 fitted on Black circles. I have these fitted currently and they are a brilliant allrounder. Just rotated at 12k so they will go for about 25k hopefully and they have been very good to me.

Cooper = Avon = Avoid like the plague!

What size are they?

If they are 205/45 16 then as Decron says there are so many threads about tyre for the Furby vRS. Decron will accuse you of killing innocent Kittens if you don't use the search button.

If they are the same as our Mk1 TDI (100Hp) i.e. 185/60 14 then I would recommend either the OEM Continentals or Vredestein Hi-Tracs. Vredstestiens always win or come close in Auto-express tyre tests and the Hi-tracs won the test in that size a couple of years ago. We also have a pair of Quatrac 2 all season/winter tyres which are brilliant on snow/slush. Price wise, well I think they were both were approx £40 each when we bought them early last year.

Have a look at tyreshopper.co.uk I used them about 18 months ago for Continentals for my son's Fiesta which were fitted at my local National Tyres depot. I shopped around and found tyre shopper to be the cheapest. No hastle ordering system and a good service at National Tyres. I even asked National Tyres for a quote direct but they couldn't come anywhere near to tyre shopper's price.