2016 Mazda6 Touring Tire Reccomendations
Looking for tire advice. I have a 2016 Mazda6 Touring with 100,400-ish miles. I last got tires for it in July 2024, and according to my Fuelly logs, it had around 84,000 miles then.
My Continental ExtremeContact DWS06 Plus tires have kinda disappointed me. Bought the car new off the lot in October 2015. Love the car, but not tires.
Overall, I’ve had bad luck with tires. The OEM Dunlops sucked, and I replaced all 4 with Yokohoma Advan Sports. This was in February 2018 after one of the Dunlops suffered a blowout due to a pothole on I-440 in Nashville, TN. That happened at 24,000-ish miles. Those Yokohamas started to become super noisy and were basically useless in the snow towards 55k miles, so I replaced them with General G-Maxes in March 2022 (60,814 miles exactly). The Generals developed got noisy as hell - even with regular rotations (sounded like the car needed a wheel bearing), so they got replaced early-ish with the Continentals in July 2024. The 6 was at 84,000 miles the . Now, I’m at 100,400 miles as of today, and I have photos of the tread life measurements of the Continentals.
What do I do? I don’t drive aggressively, at least I don’t think. I have a short commute to work - as evidenced by the car eclipsing a decade old and just now hitting 100,000 miles. I worked from home for several years, it stays in a garage at my house or a parking garage at work. I almost always do short, around-town trips - except for an occasional family road trip. Again, I don’t drive this car super aggressively (I can’t, really, since I’m often plainly stuck in traffic or taking kids to school or sports games).
I’ve noticed the Continentals are sloped downwards toward the edges, so they have less tread on the outside than towards the middle. Is that normal for these tires?
I basically need a good quality tire that’s A.) longer lasting, B.) won’t set my wallet on fire, and C.) offers good rain traction and can make the car *not* totally helpless in the occasional snow. We live in Kentucky and this is car our only way to get around if/when it does snow somewhat.
Looking to replace these Continentals before winter. Does what I’m looking for in a tire even exist?
Oh, and I’ve had the car’s alignment done - twice. And checked too. It’s good and within spec.
OEM tire size on this car is 225/45/r19.