After the winter storm and having a blown front shock, I decided to splurge further on a new set of tires. After some ruminating and discussions with my roommate, I settled on a set of ultra-high performance grand touring tires from Cooper Tires. This review covers dry performance, as we haven’t had any rain yet.
Cooper bills the Zeon RS3-G1 as their best, most advanced all-season high performance tire for performance vehicles. Yes, that was verbatim.
And I have to say, it does live up to that billing. During the hard braking I’ve ended up having to do, I’ve found that the tires are actually grippier than the brakes themselves. What does this mean?
It means the goddamn brakes literally cannot even lock up at all. No matter how hard I try to brake without breaking something, the tires are saying: “Yeah nah, I ain’t letting go of this road surface.”
It is nuts.
Ride quality is also very good, less road noise than my old Firehawk GT Pursuits and the Bridgestone Blizzaks. Center-line ride (where you drive the car with the steering wheel perfectly centered) feels very feather-light, like the steering is lubed up more than Hakan in SFV. Could also be affected by my new front shock assemblies, though.
That is to say, the steering is far more responsive on the Zeons, and less prone to randomly wandering on the road compared to the Blizzaks. However, it will still react according to the road surface, so grooves and ruts in the road will still require you to correct anyway. With my old Firehawk GT Pursuits that wasn’t necessarily the case, but I chalked that up to the tread pattern, and the fact that the tire compound in the Firehawks were ridiculously hard and terrible with grip.
I’ve only managed to chirp the tires maybe only once in the two weeks I’ve had the tires, though I’m driving conservatively because I don’t want to abuse my bone-stock transmission until I’ve gotten the money to upgrade to a monstrous, bomb-proof BCA-built transmission — go ahead, fiddle with the dropdown options...see how expensive it gets.
There is one thing these tires have in spades: Cornering. It corners like a boss — I’ve powered through intersections at close to 40MPH without losing grip, or minor squealing.
The best part is the price: I ended up paying 99 dollars per tire for a total of $396.20. Though these specific tires appear to not qualify for the national rebate from Cooper Tires (they are offering $15 off for CS5 Grand Tourings and CS5 Ultra Tourings).
It is important to note that the Zeons have a 45,000 mile warranty, while the CS5's have an 80,000 mile warranty. I will be watching this closely as the Zeons are ultra-performance tires.
Hot damn. Will update this review once I have driven in the wet.