Actually, there isn't much of a review to be had. A friend of mine ran a new set of these on his Mark 6 Golf R at the track today. After 4 sessions, this is what he found on his front tires.





I imagine Tire Rack will take care of him on this.

Kumho needs to do a little more work to get back into the extreme performance summer tire game.

 

Looks like they overheated and he was running too much pressure.

I found them to be pretty good for autocross. The only chance I had to track them was in the rain but they were pretty good there, too.

My abiding memory of them was an incredible amount of noise.

 

I can't pinkie swear he didn't overheat them, but he's a pretty good driver and doesn't torture tires that i know of. They were not over-inflated. He watches his pressures very closely.

 

Wow, those things melted. Too much car / too little tire?
I've seen that kind of wear on powerful front-heavy cars (Evo etc) but usually more than 4 sessions...

 

Yeah, I've seen it on heavier cars on really hot days, too. Yesterday, it started out at 50F and was about 65F by session 4. It finally hit 74F by session 6. The track was so cold during the first 2 sessions, that nobody drove more than maybe 75%. I don't think overheating was it. This looks like manufacturing defects to me.

 

Apparently there are similar reviews on tire rack. Delamitation down the center. Guess someone skimped on engineering QA.

 

I guess I should be glad I never got them on a dry track then.

 

... While I didn't see any wear like this, my gut tells me these require a bit of camber, and could probably use a heat cycle and maybe even shaved (REALLY THICK TREAD BLOCKS). In my personal testing, as well as testing on a well known very well prepared STX car, they needed a heat cycle before they worked well. Said STX car got 140 runs out of them. I'm on 20ish, plus 500 street and canyons miles. Hopefully they see me to the Match tour, but if not, I'm trying the 255 next.

 

Kumho wants them back and sent him shipping labels. Tire Rack is going to set him up with another set of RE-71Rs.

 

I'm wondering if they'll let him know what happened. I just ran these at SoW this weekend and they wore fairly evenly, no sign of this kind of delamination. Maybe there are some bad batches?

 

Could be some bad lots. If Tire Rack's reviews are any indication, 30% of them have problems with delamination. I don't think he expects to hear from Kumho, but it could happen.

 

It's worth him at least following up a few times with Kumho. He could also offer to run some real life tests and provide feedback after the previous issue, and end up with free tires or discounted tires!

 

Hopefully my next set doesn't do this - they released the 255/40/17 RIGHT after I bought my 245s.

 

these new "autox" tires are a little soft for HPDE I suspect (BFG rival S, Kumho V720, Bridgestone RE71R seems a little better maybe?)