2024 USA 235,225,215 / 75 / 15 white wall tire options

[Joe G 12138]

    The Hankook Kinergy replaced the Optimo. The whitewall is only about 3/4-7/8" if you can live with that. I put a set on my '65 last year; no complaints. They have a rather high treadwear rating; but my tires age out not wear out. As far as installation; Tire Rack (online) sells them with the whitewall option. Before buying; I shopped around for installation. National chain "Discount Tire" (now owned by Tire Rack) asked me what tires I was getting. He said "why not buy them here? They were not listed in whitewall. He made some calls; (there was an error) and I was able to buy local with online pricing, not fool with shipping, and have full warranty and free rotations available. And the manufacturing dates (Dot codes) were months not years old. Fresh tires were important to me; they rot before they wear out on my cars.     Joe

[chris cunliffe]

I dont know if they are widely available in the USA but I fitted Kontio whitepaw radials on my 57 Seville.They are from Finland and in the UK they are around 30% cheaper than Coker and Diamondback tyres. Made a huge difference to the handling and diving comfort compared to the bias belted tyres I removed

[TJ Hopland]

Thanks for the tip on Kontio.  Looks like for USA there appears to be a few tire dealers but all the big online places like Summit and Jegs carry them.  Summit even has several options in stock.  They appear to be mostly into the wide white wall so if that is what you are looking for may be worth investigating. 

For those the prices are in the $250 range.  From what I can tell that is in the ballpark of Cooker but I don't really shop for those.  I would guess it works out in your case because there are higher fees importing from the USA than Finland. Maybe they are better tho?  We don't generally hear good things about some Cooker models when it comes to actually driving. 

[Caddyholic]

Have you looked at these. Carcus is Hankooks

https://callitw.com/view_cart.asp

[Joe G 12138]

I dont know if they are widely available in the USA but I fitted Kontio whitepaw radials on my 57 Seville.They are from Finland and in the UK they are around 30% cheaper than Coker and Diamondback tyres. Made a huge difference to the handling and diving comfort compared to the bias belted tyres I removed

I am seriously considering the Kontios for my '55. But I have not been able see any "real reviews" or opinions on them. All the canned / planted reviews just say how good they look on their car. What's the opinion on them from those closer to their Finland homeland?
     Thanks Chris! That helped     Joe G

[Steve W]

Funny I should stumble upon your thread just now!

Earlier today I just ordered my first set of Hankook tires...Kinergy ST H735!
I did a bunch of research, and narrowed it down to either Hankook or Nexen.

I actually prefer the skinnier whitewall 3/4" to 7/8" max. Just my personal preference, but I think they look best on my 68 Coupe deVille.

They both fit my budget (cost about the same, actually), have pretty good reviews, and are readily available in P235 75 R15. I 'almost' went for the Vogues, but I just thought the whitewall was a bit too wide, and after researching, they didn't get any better reviews than either Hankook or Nexen.

So, I called my local perfromance tire shop and spoke to one of the guys who seemed to really know these tires, and he basically said they were both great tires, and in his experience the Hankooks handled a little bit better, especially in the wet, but the Nexens lasted a little bit longer, tread-wise.
(These days, my tires age out before they wear out, so the handling over logevity made sense.)

He also said that the Hankooks' whitewall was closer to 7/8", where the Nexen was just about 3'4".

So I ordered the Hankooks. The'll arrive in a few days and I've already spoken to the shop that does my tires, and they are happy to mount, balance and align when I bring them in.

I'll post back with my impressions later.

Happy Easter!

[TJ Hopland]

Just picked up a pair of Nexan's.  Have not mounted them yet but they look alright.  The whitewall looks to be a bit thinner and further in than what I have now but for $105 I think its good enough.
 
I was gonna order them online but for the heck of it stopped into the tire shop down the block that I have had bad experiences with their work and asked and they said no problem they will be here tomorrow and no problem if you just want to carry them out. 

It sounds like most regions have one major tire distributor that handles most brands and most shops in the area get them from the same place.  Nexan is popular enough that those distributors stock the popular ones like these whitewalls so its worth asking your local shops even if you don't like them or trust them to do the work.  I rattled off the other brands that came up in this thread and Nexan was the only one the counter guy knew of and those seemed to be the leader here so I didn't dig much further to see if any of the others were possibly 'in town' also. 

It looks like my suspension bushings are shot so I am actually 'wearing out' tires fairly quick so I'm gonna leave the not quite aged out ones off the rear that are not worn on the front and put the new ones on the back and see how it goes.  If it tears up the old ones quick I will just know I need to do the bushings sooner than later and I won't be out the exta money of maybe tearing up a new pair. 

[smokuspollutus]

I should also report I have installed a set of the 225/75 Ironmans. White wall is a little narrower than the Lanvigators they replaced. However they ride well and stay white-I can't complain.

[JerRita]

I was at the GN and myself and others were docked points for having Hancook optima tires on our cars. We were told the tires had to be BF Goodrich, Firestone or Uniroyal OEM brand. Well none of those companies make WW anymore. I never was docked points before with the same tires. What are we to do? I asked the judges about Vogue or Coker and they said they weren't OEM brands. 

[Clewisiii]

Coker has Firestone molds and will sell those in bias ply atleast. I reached out to Coker to ask if the Firestone are available in 2.25 inch white walls, which is original for my car. They never got back to me.

[TJ Hopland]

Points is a whole other problem and not the intention of the thread.  Do you loose points for both the brand and white wall being wrong?

[TJ Hopland]

I did get the Nexans mounted and got some miles on them before they brought the salt out.  No complaints.  The WW is slightly different than what I still have on the front which wasn't 'correct' either but I still say for a readily available tire in the $100 ballpark its good enough. 

The were super hard to install but I don't know if that had anything to do with the tires themselves or maybe the Eldo wheels being tighter than the typical modern wheel or the equipment or the operator?    A friend of mine did it at his home shop on a machine that was fairly new to him so lots of variables.  They were super tight getting the beads over the rim and then really didn't want to seat, took several tried with the blaster.