General Tire Altimax HP

Price Paid:  $0.00 from Tire Warehouse

Year / Model Reviewed:
2005 Pontiac Sunfire

Strengths:
Quieter than the Dunlop Sports I replaced. Good in/on snow; so-so on ice; good in rain. Reliable. Reasonably priced.

Weaknesses:
I haven't found any weaknesses. I've read about "pulling," but those people may have needed a front end alignment.

Summary:
These were suggested to me seven months ago, based on my driving style, to replace my discontinued Dunlops. At first I wasn't sure if I liked them, and the first few rainy days I drove with them I drifted on tight turns, but I chalked that up to their newness and my initial unfamiliarity with them. Now I don't drift in the rain and I have no trouble getting through several inches of snow on unplowed roads. I like them better than the Dunlops and would get them again. Not sure if my performance differs because they are nitrogen filled. I would not hesitate to buy them again.

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 4 of 5

Used product for
More than 1 year

Visitors rate this review
1.00 of 5, 3.00 votes

Price Paid:  $0.00

Year / Model Reviewed:
2002 Sunfire

Strengths:
Excellent in DRY/WET conditions. This tire is also excellent in SNOW.

Weaknesses:
Not the greatest in ICY conditions, but still do well.

Summary:
If you follow the proper speed for weather conditions, these tires are great. I have had no issues thus far.

Price Paid:  $80.00 from creamery Tire co.

Year / Model Reviewed:
2003 altimax

Strengths:
The strength of this tire is the tread design. It allows for above average traction even on a Nissan Frontier Pick up truck. It is also a nice looking tire. My gas mileage was no better or worse then with the last set of tires. The tire price was reasonable. The customer service folks for General Tires(Continental Tire Co.) were polite and offered many tips to help maintain the tires. This tire is a good buy for a high mileage vehicle.

Weaknesses:
The downsides to this tire are that it has a weak sidewall. They are a bit noisy. The tread also collects a lot of stones and kicks them up to the underside of my truck. As mentioned earlier there is a definite drop off in traction after 10K miles.
And finally I don't believe I will not even get 40 K out of them even if I do keep rotating at every 6K. My experience has been that at every rotation I have them rebalanced and an additional weight is added to a different tire.

Summary:
Before I begin my review I would like to say that I have these tires on an 03 Nissan Frontier pick up truck. I would consider this review to be relevant only to other Nissan Frontier drivers. Other cars and trucks will have different suspensions ect.
I purchased these tires in March of 2008.
I do mostly high speed driving.
I now have 16k on them and am getting ready for a 3rd tire rotation. My tire pressure is maintained at 35lbs.I have driven through light snow, rain soaked highways,and on blistering hot blacktop. These tires were purchased based on reviews from Tire Rack. The original reviews were 4 star. I think many of the reviews were written without validation. You can not collect enough data in 500 miles! Additionally I have read reviews regarding tire pull and belts that shifted. All tire company's have similar problems. Its called poor quality control. My thoughts are as follows. The tire showed excellent traction in the first 10k miles. After that there has been a noticeable drop off.
At this point they are very average.

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Price Paid:  $0.00

Year / Model Reviewed:
2006 Honda CRV SE

Strengths:
none

Weaknesses:
BAD quality

Summary:
The General Altimax HP tires have one major problem - extremely bad quality. I ordered 5 tires for my wife's Honda CRV (1 as a spare), and the right front tire appeared to be a pulling tire - the car was pulling to the right. Tirerack replaced it, meanwhile I did about a 1000 miles on these tires without any problems. Then I put a spare to right front - and it appeared to be a pulling tire, too! 2 bad out of 6?! Read other commends about thin sidewall, totally true, and this is probably what leads to the high probability of pulling tires. At that point I realized that if I just replace this tire again, any other one which was not used as a front one yet may be bad, too - so I returned these tires to Tirerack for refund. And here's big MINUS for Tirerack - I had to ship tires back on my own expense, and their refund did not cover the initial shipping costs, neither it covered the fees I paid to the installer. I will NEVER use Tirerack again!!! What for? To save money on tires by pay separately for shipping and mounting? Any local tire company like American Tires/Discount Tires/Big O Tires/etc sells tires for a bit higher price BUT the installation and lifetime rotation/balancing is included. Once I had a problem with new tires I bought for my BMW from All American Tires, they found the bad tire and replaced it the same day, no cost to me. And they CARED. Versus the "tirerack recommended installer" I used - when I came to them with pulling tire stuff, they clearly showed they do not care a bit. Conclusions: NO for General, NO for Tirerack.

Oh, and I bought Michelins Hydroedge from a local tire company to replace those and am really HAPPY with that - no problems at all. Don't waste your time and money on buying these cheap tires. My lesson was learned hard.

Similar Products Used:
Michelin Hydroedge - it rocks! Highly recommended.

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Price Paid:  $0.00

Year / Model Reviewed:
2008 general altimax hp

Strengths:
Interstate driving/quiet/Wet conditions.

Weaknesses:
Snow/Ice

Summary:
These are bad tires to own for winter driving. They are pleasant on the dry/wet Interstate, but are really not meant for snow at all.

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