Best Tyres for the MINI Cooper S

The tires are fine but wear out ridiculously quickly; so quickly it costs you money vs Michelin! I decided to buy something more mid range, I am happy with Kumho currently as I find Michelin ridiculously overpriced

On road it's like having a semislick which is capable of handling water showers like an UHP tyre. On track you can feel it's not a semislick, but you can enjoy a stable performance allowing you 100% of fun with 80% lap time or something like that.
On the road wear on external shoulder is high, on track it's really impressive lap after lap.

Noise levels is good, grip dry or wet more than I need. The big surprise is how comfortable they are for 40 series tyres. Too early to judge wear.

These tires are decent for mild road driving but my god do they have soft and floppy sidewalls. I do quite a bit of spirited driving in these (and 1 track day a year) and the front tires chunked badly on the outer shoulders after about 7 months. As a point of comparison the stock tires on my Mini (before I changed them out) handled the same level of driving for much longer without chunking. Not buying them again.

On the track they get greasy after ~10 minutes. They are really good in the rain though.

Don't really understand why they made these performance tires so floppy. They work great if you're not doing much hard cornering - but if that's the case you don't need UHP summers to begin with.

Being said I have driven these tyres for only 350km I can only give my impression about the starting life of these tyres, about 1000-1500km should be performing better, I have a Mini Cooper S R56, a very handling car, I have been using SemiSlick almost these 10 last years ( Federal RSR 595 and the new upgrade) the differences in this car bewteen both tyres are not huge, The semis in 1200kg front traction car are very difficult to warm up in the rear-end, even trying to adjust the pressure, but the Kumho as they work in a fewer temp range you feel the rear very stable, the handling input seems quite similar than Federal in terms of precision, my driving style has always been very pointly with input so changing the Federal for these Kumho has made to me change my driving style, the huge amount of grip makes the car very neutral, I didn't find any understeering situation, but it's true the rear never will want to overtake you, it's always sticked tl the ground, that combined with seems there is a short gap between the max grip snd the lack of grip makes me a little bit unconfident finding the max grip over lateral load. But for the price that these tyres cost it a must, you can go very fast without compromising safety, no snaps or understeers and you can go very comfortable going calm, the tyres dont sound a all ( to me, maybe for others they sound a lot, but Im comparing with a semi that over 30-40km you were hearing the tyre eating the ground)

For the price they run premium brands very close, but they wear faster, particularly on a FWD car with lots of torque.

At the time I purchased these, they were the only all-weather tire in size 205/45 R17 I could find in North America. It was my first experience with Vredestein. They are excellent in the wet, including cold and wet, and while driving spiritedly. They’re good in the dry, although breaking distance is average. They’re surprisingly okay in the snow! I wouldn’t use them as dedicated winter tires in Canada, but they managed well in fresh snow, packed snow and uphill on slippery packed snow. The tire is marketed as being performance-oriented, which is a bit of a stretch. It does handle well, but under high torque, the tires tend to take a second before finding their grip.
The biggest downside of these tires are the sidewalls which are on the softer side. Actually, after hitting what felt like a small pothole, the tire ripped across the sidewall and tread. That kind of tear was too catastrophic to be repaired. At the time, I could not source a replacement tire in Canada, which is when I decided to swap all four tires for something different.

These tyres were OEM on a Mini Cooper S. I drove them a full year before ditching them. Their only pro is the aggressive cornering it provides, although that may just be from being runflats. I’ll never know because this experience soured me on RFTs for ever. These tyres are dangerous to drive on in temps below 7c when they turn into hard, stone-like rubber. A dusting of snow and they lose all grip. They essentially behave like a summer tyre. The slightest imperfection in the pavement sends seismic tremors deep into the car’s frame. I was finding myself scanning the road, looking for potholes to avoid. Replacing these tyres was the best upgrade for my car.

Great tires half price of Michelin will happily buy again