Best Tyres for the Mercedes Benz 190E 2.6 tuned

I've driven lot's of budget tyre's; Kleber, Dayton, nexen, syron, nankang.... And they all performed worse then used premium tyre's!!! I'm talking about continental; 5 years old with 5.5mm from eBay... Another set of Uniroyal Rainsport 3; again used from eBay, outperforming budget tyre's again and again. So since a few year's I'm buying new premium tyre's and it's worth every penny.

I was running Pirelli P6 in 205/60r15 and got the Kumhos second hand with a set of AMG rims I bought. They're undersize for the rims and my speedo and are about half worn, so I've been deciding on replacement brands in a 215/45r17 sports tyre, so was being particularly attuned to what these Kumhos were like as opposed to others at similar prices, and whether it was worth quite a bit extra to go top shelf instead.

As far as purchasing goes, in these smaller sizes the KU31 is about the same price as budget mid-performance tyres. Straight up that's a big plus in its favour, although at a larger 235/40r17 size they're a similar price to the top shelf brands and would have to compare to those on merits alone.

Compared to the Pirelli P6 the KU31 is definitely a softer compound, it responds better to warming but has slightly less initial resistance to dry wheelspin during hard upshifts when cold, but with better progression as they quickly heat. They don't seem to fully let go and so offer more confidence than the shopping trolley Pirellis, although I've no doubt they'll wear at several times the rate.
In the wet the grip is miles ahead of the P6 and the Kumhos feel much safer operating at speed.
In highway driving steering is very direct and the car is noticably more stable than with the P6, even being subject less to crosswinds. These are tyres which will definitely be complemented by stiffer aftermarket suspension tuning to give a good race kind of feel.

They're extremely noisy tyres at low speeds, when rolling they almost sound like worn brake pads from the cabin. Their highway and wet performance is easily worth the hit, given the budget price range in my desired sizes.

If you were going to go for large tyres in 18" diameters and 235+ tread sizes I'd say it might be worth considering other high performance brands in the price range these jump to. But in 215x17 and other smaller sizes they're dirt cheap and perform like something that costs hundreds more to fit your car with.