Best Tires for the Mercedes Benz W124 Estate

A premium tire for a mid-range price. This is an initial review after around 1000 miles. I got 2 of these for the front axle of my old Merc diesel after the previously using Uniroyal Rainexperts. I was going to go for either Uniroyal RE3 or Continental PC5s, but after seeing these on offer and reading a load of reviews I thought I'd give them a go. Straight away I noticed the difference in rolling resistance, noise and comfort being much better. They don't have an exciting tread pattern, but they are extremely quiet, and give a very smooth and comfortable ride. I can't comment on wear yet, but performance in the dry and wet is very good. Only negative is soft sidewalls- on 'spirited' cornering/fast motorway slip turns etc I can feel them on the edge of their comfort level at standard pressures (32psi). I like a compound with a bit of 'give' for fronts though, so I can get more feedback, so this is the trade-off. Very comfortable for all-round use though, and a bargain at their price-point.

I've fitted these to both Merc W124 estates I've had, preferring them on the rear, where they last for ages just doing their thing. Although on the front they give a smooth and quiet ride in the dry, the compound seems to give less feel & grip during medium to hard braking, and more prone to aquaplaning in very wet weather than non 'eco' tires. With decently stiff sidewalls they cope with the heavy 6-cylinder Diesel up front, or a full load of people or stuff in the back. On the back I've felt them briefly lose traction turning on wet roads, but I've had good wear with 35k from a set on the rear.
They do seem to damage and/or puncture quite easily, I've had 3 punctures and tread/sidewall damage in the last few years but maybe I've just been unlucky. Definitely not a sporty tire, built for low wear and touring comfort.

Overall: I think that this budget tire delivers surprising levels of performance for its price range. My rating is benchmarked to what I paid for these tires so in my books they performed really really well. In the dry: no complaints here. For whatever horses that remain in my old car these tires are able to handle it all well. Hard braking, cornering on two wheels (ok not really) in the dry there is barely a squeal from the tires and it has never let me down. Wet: Straight line stability over puddles are excellent. in excess of 100km/h over puddles and the car is arrow straight. Braking in the wet is reasonable. On a down note. When the tires hit about one year the wet handling dropped. Hard bends in the wet would induce understeer. however straight line is not affected. Wear: 1 year and 30,000km long there looks to be plenty life left on the tire. Really happy about that. Noise and comfort: I cant say that there has been much different between the noise and comfort since new to now. perhaps de-sensitisation or possibly they just havent degenerated too much. Overall i would recommend this tire and i would buy it again. Though admittedly i'm tempted to try another flavour just for the hell of it.

Wonderful wear and grip and all year round use. Coped with snow pretty well too, not as good as a full winter tire though as these are all season.

Got these after my conti premium contact 2's. They were huge drop in wet weather performance. comfort, noise, dry and other straight line stuff is still ok, but i found the tires alarming in the wet. Particularly with wet braking. Wet cornering is still ok, aquaplaning abilities ok. but wet braking NO! On a good note... if youre a cautious driver. This hard compound tire will last you a bit. Right about this time last year my CPC2's got too thin. The P6's are still humming along with decent tread depth. BTW this is a review of Italian made P6's

This tire was a real plain jane on the shelves, but it sure did perform very well. Dry grip excellent, wet grip in heavy tropical storms even better. (caveat: i drive in a country with ambient temp at 27-30 deg c.) I would recommend this tire to anyone. the drawbacks though are that they seemed to have wore itself out very quick and before i hit the tread wear indicator the fronts started to aquaplane a bit more than usual (this is after a year). Its also possible that with my confidence in the tires i did tend to push them in the wet. Another little problem is that i got sidewall bubbles on all 4 of my tires. could not quite explain why. though sometimes i do have to go up and down kerbs at very very slow speeds. To attest to the softness of the compound, i once had an emergency brake and the wheels literally shaved themselves in that area. you couldnt see it but the drive had a thud thud after. had to do some aggressive slaloms to re-round the tires..... but i would do it all over again if i had the spare cash