01-30-2010, 03:17 PM
space-time wrote:Ditto Sam's Club.
costco has some goo deals on Michelin tires, usually a $70 off coupon for a set of 4, and they do all the maintenance for "free" while you shop.
Of course, the $50 membership fee has something to do with this, but if you pay it anyway to be allowed to buy into their warehouse, then the tire maintenance is really free.
Plus, if you ever get a flat 1000 miles away from home and there is a Costco nearby, they will fix it for you for free.
Personally, I'd be much more concerned by a used car that has four new tires on it, as that would tend to indicate suspension and/or alignment problems that the seller didn't want to deal with and is trying to disguise.
In a similar vein, I'd avoid like the plague any used car that has recently been repainted.
Back to the original question: Unless the vehicle is all- or four-wheel-drive, and as long as the mis-matched tires are the same size and performance rating (S, T, H, etc), it's not a big deal. Used cars are, well, used, and unless someone is obsessive-compulsive about rotating and balancing their tires it's next to impossible to get a set of tires on a modern front-wheel-drive car to wear evenly. This is because on front-wheel-drive vehicles the front tires do all the pulling, all the steering, and most of the braking, whereas basically all the rear tires do is keep the muffler from scraping on the ground.
