By Jeff Glucker
Remember when I trekked down to New Orleans for a look at Michelin’s next performance tire? That was back in December 2012, and the tire is called the Pilot A/S 3. I was wowed but its capability, performance, and overall quality. Now, finally, it’s available for sale. It’s offered up in a bunch of sizes, comes with a 45,000-mile warranty, and it looks like they cost around $700 for a full set. Not bad for an all-season that can compete with (and beat) ultra-high performance summer rubber offered up by the competition.
Why am I bringing this up?
Well, I loved the A/S 3 so much that I thought about it for a bit after I returned home. Parked in my garage is a project car, and it needs some new tires since we’re looking at different wheel options. Yes, I may live in Southern California but the plan is to drive The Wombat everywhere once it’s finished. A high-performance all-season could be just what I’m looking for, and so I’m excited that these tires are finally for sale.
Stay tuned as we travel down the project car path, there’s video of the car arriving soon and some new updates will appear on Hooniverse this month. For now though, go check out the Michelin A/S 3 and sound off in the comments regarding this potential decision for the wagon.
While I haven't driven the Michelins, the Goodyear F1 A/S Asymmetrical on the Focus RS impressed me so much I bought them when I drove that car.
Should say, paid $502 shipped for a full set.
No 14" or 15"? Unrelated to my circle of cars.
Unless they skipped those sizes just so they could instead offer 8", 12", and 13", that leaves me out, too.
I placed my order this past Friday; hopefully I'll be rolling on them by week's end. Considering how much my friends love their HydroEdge tires, I'm looking forward to finally experiencing some top performance all season goodness of my own.
And they've got to be better than the Hankook Optimos this car shipped with.
They are much better, you'll love 'em
I'll wait for some actual numbers from tirerack testing rather than Michelin's claims that their "internal testing" shows that it is superior. In general I'll take a max performance summer tire that in most cases does better in the dry, the wet and have better hydroplane resistance than all season tires, even ultra HP ones.