Best Tires for the Ford Focus mk2

Simple budget tires that do the job. Totally adequate proposal. I chose these ones because of a mix between low price and lower noise! This last one is a very important detail. These tires are rated at 69 dB. I should have gone for even quieter tires, but the price would go up substantially!
Would I buy it again? Probably not, mostly because of low (shallow) tread and noise level (69dB). I would prefer to settle with 67dB tires. The regular >70dB make my old car sound like a tractor...
The tires come with the proper red and yellow dot markings for assembly reference. I assemble my own tires, so it's worth mention. They are rather easy on you, assembly wise.
On the road: Now start the mix feelings. Under dry conditions, it's an absolutely decent set of tires. With some (normal) initial oversteering effect. That usually will soon turn more neutral with the increased km's. This should not be any different. On dry environment quite positive outcome, The road feedback is quite good and so on.
Now the real issue, wet conditions. It's worth notice that when I say wet, it was in fact pouring! With considerable puddles of water, not just wet spots.
Any tire would struggle under such conditions! These tires have really shallow treads! While they don't catch many stones between the treads. On "real" water puddles I felt more than once aquaplaning! Nothing terribly negative, but surely a good tell tale that their limits were showing!
Budget wise, it is a honest and rather decent choice! Recommended with the mentioned compromises.

Bought a set of Bridgestone Turanza ER300 for my 2009 Ford Focus mk2.5 Ghia 2.0 Duratec in Dec/2019. DOT 4619, recent tires for the occasion.

As they are the stock tires that came in 2009 with my car, I didn't made any research at all. At first, on the initial kilometers, I found out that the wet grip was a stomp, even with the tires brand new, which made me aquaplane at just about 60 kph and lose control of my car. After a couple thousand kilometers, I noticed the wet and dry grip improve (about after 5000km) and the tire became predictable for all of its remaining life.

The wet grip is always bad, maybe the worse tires I've ever tested. If I get a steep slope at 90 kph with my car in 5th gear only at 2500 rpm with TC off, the wheels starts spinning even with best tarmac drainage. It's very very very dangerous. You get used to it, but the tires don't let you drive past 70-80 kph in wet conditions, even if the road is not slippery, it's simply not safe.

On the other hand, dry grip is spectacular. It's a predictable tire, soft and grippy, doesn't disappoint even if you force a oversteer reaction from the car or slam the brakes mid-turn. Seems like a different tire comparing wet and dry.

The noise is also very low, it's a really soft tire to drive.

Durability is its strong quality. I drove until now 62000km (about 38000mi) in Brazil's roads, which is common to encounter dangerous potholes and bad tarmac, and the tires simply never got a puncture even through almost 7 years of use. It's not even on TWI mark (about 1mm to get there).

For conclusion: I would never buy these tires again due to its wet grip, which is dangerous for most of the regular drivers. If I lived in a dry climate country, maybe I'd consider another set.

A user experience from Taiwan (using translation software). I have used PS5 and Protenza Sport in the past few years. Let me talk about the disadvantages first: as the test comments on the website, the anti-skid performance is not very good. Pay attention to moderate water accumulation and bridge joints when turning in rainy days. Moderate water accumulation will make your car move left and right. On the contrary, the water-breaking performance is quite good when encountering deep water. The lateral deviation of the bridge joint will scare you (this is very interesting, because the performance of PTZS is exactly the opposite of MC7). The noise performance is already great compared with the two models mentioned above. After all, they are all summer performance tires. Advantages: comfortable, but the sidewall is still a bit soft (I used csc5 n years ago). Extreme cornering will make you lose confidence. Generally, the grip on dry and wet roads is very good. If you are also in a rainy and humid country and often use highways to commute, I would recommend ps5. In addition to the wear improvement, the straight-line hydroplaning performance is really great, but it also sacrifices a little grip. If you like to drive aggressively on mountain roads occasionally and don’t care about wear and the exciting straight-line hydroplaning, ptzs is the best choice. The hard sidewall and wet cornering impressed me. If you want to achieve some balance between the two, mc7 is what you should choose.

Dunlop is a tire that has been successful in European tests without compromising on quality

A good tire. Quiet, fuel efficient and good mileage. Downside is they seem a little delicate, likely from soft sidewalls. In 3 full sets of 4 I've had to replace at least 2 tires from punctures near the sidewall. 1 was clipping a tree root on a country lane which I feel most tires would've shrugged off. I'd buy again though. Nice quiet smooth tire that's very secure feeling in the wet.

After 21000miles and 5years the tires have excessive wear The wet grip is non-existent from the 1st day. The dry grip is average while there spin a lot when accelerating sharply. Definitely I'll not buy again.

Fitted tires based off reviews form this site. They exceeded my expectations, so much so I have also fitted them to my partner car also. Excellent ware (39,000km and still 1mm to ware bar), good dependable wet and dry handling, very good in colder temperature, Great in the snow (the little we get in Ireland)
Would recommend to anybody

Coming from Finland, a country of winter snow and studs. Have these on two cars
- 2007 Focus Cabrio
- 1998 996 C2

In most winnter conditions amazing grip level. However, two shortcomings. 1) The modern light studs do not penetrate well if there is loose snow on top of hard snor/icy surface. Obviously this has more to do with regulations rather than the tire brand and model. 2) These modern silica tires seem to collect a layer of snow in slow speeds, say below 30..40 km/h . Both these properties make the tires a bit Jekyll and Hyde. At best it gives enormous amount of grip but then you come on loose snow and you think you are driving very slow - and suddenly you have absolutely no grip. I wish we could still have the longer studs. I can tell it is not nice to get the impression of good grip for some 50 km (0.3 < muu < 0.5) and then in an open place wind has collected snow on the hard snow surface and a deer runs into your lights and you find absolutely no grip at all (like muu = 0.05). Fortunately I had my insurances. I dont think this would have happened with the old style big block, long heavy stud Hakkapeliittas. Those would have not given the level of grip on the 50 km stretch but they would have lost pretty much nothing coming to the loose snow.

What impresses me is the strong stud base. The cavity seems wrapped with a very strong compound and the studs seem to not come off at all. The construction of the tire seems very good for winter purposes, not too stiff nor too soft side wall. Subjectively I think I would prefer a sharper shoulder but that is more like an image in my head rather than supported by my driving experience.

If I was to develop this tire I would look into the slow speed attached snow layer phenomenom - perhaps on all the silica tires. I also would like to try something like raised tread on the lines of studs to get the modern studs penetrate better the loose snow on top of the hard.

I know one problem with the winter tire testing is that the tracks are always similar to get good comparability. But in real life the surfaces vary much more in winter conditions and a good winter tire should even the grip levels to predictable. As good as the X-Ice 4 is it is not the most predictable tire. Fortunately you can learn to predict the places where you will loose the grip. I find this all more of a result of rather compromized regulations than tire makes development work.

Simply good quality tire with elegant look and stable while driving, very silent.