I put a set of these on my 98 1.8T qms in 225/45/17 about 2 months and 2500 mi ago. I thought peeps would be interested in hearing about them.

I bought these because I want an excellent summer tire that has the best rain performance I can get, with a quiet and smooth ride. The Contisportcontact 2 was my top choice, but in this size that tire is running $145 per, and on my 8 yr old car, I thought I'd like to save a few bucks. The Avon tire turns out to run $102 in this size.

I am really happy with this tire, to the point of raving about it. I have driven it in a wide range of conditions, from very hot to cool, and heavy rain. I've driven on tarmac ranging from very smooth to lots of pot-hole repairs.

The tire is very smooth and very quiet, with good grip on wet surfaces. Very little road noise. The feel of the tire suits the car very well, although it is soft on initial turn-in, something that not everyone will like. Some will hate it =) It feels like the toyo T1-S although I have not done a comparison on this car. I run the pressure a little high, around 39 psi, to compensate for the softness of the tire, and this has a good overall feel for my tastes.

btw, I had the tires mounted with road force balancing, so it's a good initial setup. Very smooth under braking, and the pedal action feels as silky as I remember it being when new. These tires replaced a set of craptastic Kumho 712's - they had numerous hard spots after only about 18 k mi, I'll never buy Kumho again, and in general am leary of inexpensive tires. I bought the Avon's on the strength of high praise at the tirerack, Gary's endorsement of them, and their similarity in reviews to the Conti; also because this is an 8 yr old car.

On my 05 Legacy GT wagon, I'll be getting the Conti 2 for my summer use, but it's only because I wont have 20k mi on the Avon's to decide how well they wear wrt noise and stiffness that I'll be buying the contis - since it's a new car I will pay for top-flight rubber.

Anyway, anyone wondering whether to take a chance on the Avon 500's, I encourage you to do so.

 

It's good to hear that a low-priced tire can deliver satisfactory performance.

I had the CSC2 on my A4 and liked them overall for offering of good mix of performance and comfort, but yeah, they were extremely expensive.

 

How many miles did you get out of them?

 

I'm not able to tell you. I sold the car after I put on about 8K miles on them, at which point there was still a lot of tread left although the tread was somewhat chewed up because I took 'em to an autocross event with a very rough/coarse pavement.