Shortly after we purchased the van, we decided that new tires were going to soon be needed.  The front tires were Goodyear Viva 2, a tire sold and warranted exclusively through Wal-Mart.  They had 6/32" of tread on them, and performed okay.  I wasn't impressed with their wet traction, but hydroplane resistance was good, and they provided adequate grip in the snow (tested that out Christmas weekend 2004).  The rear tires were the original Goodyear Integrity.  They only had about 4/32" of rubber, and were pretty sloppy in the wet and in the snow.  One also had an improper repair (one of those screw-in plugs), so I made it a point to at least replace these.  We considered our options and decided to replace all four.

Both my wife and I have grown up in families who have great experience with Michelin tires.  I really considered no other brand, with the exception of the Goodyear Assurance ComforTred.  At this point in time, without the opportunity to "test drive" either of the tires, I weighed my past experience and reviews from online sources such as tirerack.com and ultimately chose to focus on Michelin tires.  I'm sure the Goodyear tire is a fantastic tire, but my prior experience with Michelin swayed me toward them.  After all, "so much IS riding on our tires!"

So...looking at the pretty large line of Michelin tires, I tried to narrow down my choices.  The Hydroedge is a fairly new tire, and is sold by all Michelin dealers.  Reading reviews on this tire at Tirerack.com, I decided that this wasn't the tire for us.  I read many reviews stating how great those tires handle, but also how they can ride rather "crisply", or harsh.  Ride comfort was a big priority, so I moved on.

Next on the list was the Harmony, which actually shows up as 4 different tires.  The Harmony is their general market tire, available at any Michelin dealer.  The Destiny (available only at Discount Tire), the X Radial (Sam's Club), and the Agility (Sears) are all based on the Harmony tire.  I confirmed this with a phone call to Michelin's customer support line.  After reading reviews on this tire, I decided that the Harmony line is what we're looking for, and I next had to decide on which one.  They all differ a little in their tread patterns.  They also all differ slightly in their price.  I went through the following process to decide what we were going to get.

Tires/Tread Patterns

The Harmony and Destiny are almost identical.  The X Radial and Agility are both different enough to consider separately.  Based on the information below regarding pricing and store convenience, the Harmony/Destiny were out of consideration, so it was between the X Radial and Agility.  To be honest, I wasn't overly impressed with the X Radial's tread pattern.  The tread that overlaps onto the sidewall isn't that aggressive, and none of the siping on the tread was full-depth.  The Agility had a more aggressive sidewall tread (with large snow-grabbing cavities in the tread) and also has hundreds of snow-biting edges on the footprint part of the tread.  Michelin's website does rate the all season traction of the Agility one point (of 10) higher than the X Radial.  I tended to prefer the Agility tire so far.

The pair of images below were taken by me, in the stores, to compare the tread patterns of the two tires, the Agility and the X Radial.  I believe you'll agree that the Agility appears to favor all season traction a bit more than the X Radial, as indicated on Michelin's website ratings.

Next, these graphics below were taken from Michelin's website, and show in vague terms the differences in the carcasses of the four Harmony-based Michelin tires.

Store/Customer Service

The Harmony seems to be the most expensive, at around $550 for a set installed, with road hazard warranty (RWH) through Merchant's Tire (the cheapest price I found).  I didn't check the Destiny, but I figure it'd be close to the Agility, from Sears.  Sears' price is near $500 installed, with RHW.  Sam's Club came in cheapest by far with their X Radial, at about $400 installed, with RHW.  I decided that I would forget the Harmony, since I could get a similar tire for cheaper.  I also didn't look into the Destiny, since we didn't have a Discount Tire nearby.  That left Sears and its Agility, and Sam's Club and its X Radial.  I've had wonderful customer service from Sears Auto Centers before, and figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to get new tires from them again.  I also wanted to have the alignment checked on this van, since we had just purchased it.  Sam's Club didn't even have an alignment rack, so that would have been an extra cost and added inconvenience.  Sears had a rack, and an alignment check is free with tire purchase.  Given this information, and my discussion above about the tread patterns, Sears won our business.

Tire Review

These tires perform great -- leaps and bounds over the Goodyears they replaced.  Road noise on pucked concrete roads is reduced to a muted hush rather than the coarse roar that persisted before.  Impact harshness is improved slightly, but not by much.  However, handling is so much better with these.  They're definitely a sturdier tire than what we had before.  Dodge recommends 36 psi for inflation pressures, but I believe that's too high.  I'm running mine at 31 psi with no noticeable loss in fuel economy so far.  I couldn't ask for more out of tires that are warranted for a full 80,000 miles!  Kudos to Michelin for another fantastic tire.

October 2005 Update: since first having them installed, I have moved the inflation pressures back to near where Dodge recommends.  I've got 36 psi front and 34 psi rear.  I was noticing some edge wear with the lower inflation pressures.  Still, after almost 10,000 miles, the tires are showing between 8-9/32" of tread (out of 10/32" new).  1 or 2/32" every 10k miles is great wear for such comfortable tires.

Click the picture to see them mounted on the van.

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