Given
59%
while driving a
Ford Focus ST170
(215/45 R17 W) on
mostly motorways
for 43,000
spirited miles
The dealer I bought my car from put a brand new set of these when I purchased my car. I was skeptical at first since I had never even heard of Event tyres before. I must say they had pretty good durability - I had the assumption that they would only last around 10k miles but I finally changed the whole set after 43k miles in 3 years. As the tyres were included in the purchase price, I cannot comment on value for money.
Good points:
Durability exceeded my expectations.
The strength is quite good, where I live, the roads are littered with potholes after our unusally cold winter and as much as I tried avoiding them, I still managed to catch some nasty potholes. The good thing is that the tyres were not damaged.
Decent dry grip (for a somewhat budget tyre), offering a respectably sharp turn-in. I recently had a blast through the Black Mountain pass in the Brecon Beacons (the famous A4069 road) and these tyres gave me the confidence to press on.
Bad points:
Take extra care when driving in the wet! (seriously, at my local Tesco mini roundabout the car would understeer at 10 mph. Yes, 10mph off throttle.) However, it's a little better on bigger roundabouts where you don't need as much steering lock.
These tyres can also be unpredictable in the wet, nearly got killed (totally my fault) when cornering on a slip road to join the M40. I took the bend at 60mph at which point it understeered and when I corrected myself the rear end snapped, sending me into a lift-off oversteer 360 degrees. As I said, again it was stupid of me to go that fast when joining a motorway, but be warned and slow down when driving in the wet with these tyres. I drive an ST170, it doesn't have that much power compared with the fast cars of today, but the traction light comes on a lot in the wet when accelerating even at a sensible pace.
Motorway road noise is quite loud and you get droning sounds, so if you regularly go on long journeys, spend a little extra on something more comfortable.
Overall, they were reasonably ok I suppose, just not in the wet. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for - in my case since I didn't buy them as they were already on my car, but I would not buy them again.
I have replaced these with a set of Primewell PZ900 (apparently they are a subdivision of Firestone and they have a 'B' rating for wet grip according to the EU tyre label) - £279 for a set of 4, including valves, balancing, nitrogen filling and insurance. I will review that set after I accumulate enough mileage.