Nine Lesser-Known Tire Brands You Might Not Have Heard Of

Tires are often neglected by many, yet are one of the most important things on your vehicle. Most people walk into their local tire shop and mumble something about “whatever’s cheapest” or perhaps, if they’re feeling particularly adventurous, ask for “the same ones I have right now.” In essence, the tire world has become rather like the wine industry – dominated by a handful of prestigious names that everyone recognizes, while dozens of perfectly excellent alternatives languish in obscurity. We all know Michelin makes superb rubber, just as we know Dom Pérignon makes decent champagne. 

Advertisement

Sometimes, the small vineyard down the road produces something equally brilliant for half the price. The truth is, tire technology has advanced so dramatically in recent years that even brands you’ve never heard of are producing tires that were impossible a decade ago. Before you automatically reach for the familiar names, consider this: some of the world’s best tires are made by companies you’ve probably not heard of. We all know of the major tire companies like Michelin and Goodyear (one of the few brands that manufacturers their tires in America), but there are hundreds of other brands out there, many with amazing value for money.

These are nine relatively mainstream tire brands that you’ve probably not heard of.

Advertisement

Riken is one of the nine or so tire brands that are owned by the Michelin tire company and have been playing in the North American market since 1979, with their main focus being passenger car tires. However, the company is much older than that, first being set up towards the end of World War I in 1917. Back then, the company was dedicated to the physical sciences and chemical research. A few decades later, in 1956, Riken Gomu expanded its operations into the tire manufacturing space, naming the tire brand “RIKEN” and hasn’t stopped since.

Advertisement

From 1979 onwards, RIKEN tires were exported from Japan to America, and in 1992, RIKEN was bought out by the Michelin Tire Group — a deal that remains in force today. Currently, the brand offers tires across every category you can think of, including summer, winter, all-season, touring, performance, and offroad tires, to name a few. Riken also makes tires for different types of vehicles, including SUVs, crossovers, passenger cars, and commercial vehicles, with distributor prices for commercial car tires starting from $82.75 and going all the way up to $165.50 for their premium SUV offerings. You might be interested to know that since Michelin tires are made all across the globe, from America and Europe to Asia, and recently, Africa, with local supply chains emerging everywhere, prices should become even cheaper.

Advertisement

The next company on our list is also Japanese in origin, though it couldn’t be any more different from Riken. Where Riken makes affordable tires meant to go the distance and has just a couple product lines for each class, Falken tires basically has a tire for every niche you’d possibly want, with an impressive 25 different tire lines on offer currently. Founded in Japan by parent company Sumitomo Motor Industries in 1983, the company began operations in the U.S. two years later in 1985, and expanded into Europe shortly after, in 1988. When it launched in Japan, Falken was meant to be a premium, high-performance version of the very popular Ohtsu tire company, and in keeping with this theme, the company incorporated in America not as Falken Tires, but as Falken Motorsports, and are now headquartered out of Rancho Cucamonga, also in California. 

Advertisement

The brand can certainly justify having the word “motorsports” in their name, as they have, among other things, powered three Dakar Rally champions, a Smittybilt Every Man winner, several rallying cars across continents and decades, and even carried back-to-back Petit Le Mans GT cars to victory in 2013 and 2014. In addition, Falken also became the tire sponsor of major league baseball back in 2015, and in the same year, became the sister company of Dunlop Tires, gaining access to Dunlop’s manufacturing facility and proving grounds in Buffalo — so Falken Tires are also now a proudly “Made in the USA” product.

Federal Tires is another company that has been in operation for decades yet remains largely unknown. They were initially started in 1954 in Taiwan, from where they made their way to the American market through exports in 1965, though they had started cooperation with Bridgestone Tires five years prior, in 1960. A few years later, in 1981, Federal Tires also entered into a technical knowledge-sharing partnership with Sumitomo Motor Industries (SMI) from earlier, who had founded Falken Motorsports, and just a few short years afterward, Federal Tires were given the Ishikawa Quality Award for an “excellence in tire quality.”

Advertisement

The company would later go on to win several other awards for their tires through the decades, including the Taiwan R.O.C. Quality Control award (1986), an award from GM, OPEL, and Ford (1990), the Honda Quality Award (1993), Taiwan Excellence Award (2012), the prestigious German Design Award (2018), the Red Dot Award (2017, 2019), and several others we’ve not mentioned here. Federal officially incorporated themselves in America as Federal Tires America L.L.C. in 2015, and have commenced their domestic operations since, and are currently selling a whopping 32 different tire lines in the country. In addition, they have a performance division called “Federal Motorsports” that offers an additional five tire models, all specifically designed for drift applications.

Advertisement

Vercelli, whose motto is “Own the road”, is one of the most affordable tire brands you’ve never heard of, with prices starting from $59 at Walmart. The company — owned by American Omni Trading (AOT), which is present in more than 55 countries — manufactures all Vercelli tires out of Thailand in state-of-the-art industrial facilities, and does everything in-house: from design and sourcing, to logistics and marketing. The entire USP of Vercelli is to bring good performance to people across a wide spectrum of budgets, without compromising on longevity, quality, and ruggedness, which is why they offer two limited coverage protection policies on all tires they sell: one valid for 50% of treadwear, and one for 25.

Advertisement

 While not the best in the industry, the two tire protection plans are certainly generous, offering coverage for workmanship, manufacturing defects, road hazards, and other conditions for up to 60 months and 60,000 miles, with both limits varying depending on the specific tire line purchased from Vercelli. There are currently three main offerings, called Vercelli, Classic 787, and Terreno, respectively. The Vercelli line is further split into Vercelli I with six models under it, and the Vercelli II and Vercelli IV lines with seven models each. The classic 787 line has only one model, and the Terreno line has four distinct tread patterns, each marketed as a different model, namely the M/T, H/T, A/T, and HS series.

Advertisement

A far cry from the most expensive tires in the world, Otani’s EK-1000 all-season passenger car tires do compete with the Vercelli I line that we just introduced you to, with prices starting from just $51, though they do offer several other ranges. Just like Vercelli, Otani is also based out of Thailand, which is also where all their manufacturing processes take place. Initially, the company’s founder started a tire retreading company in Thailand in the 1970s, which grew to become the first factory to use the “pre-cure” method for tire retreading. 

Advertisement

Otani Tires, as we know it today, was started fairly recently in 1986, and they do make other tire-related products such as inner tubes and pneumatic casings, though their primary business still is cushion and solid passenger car tires. In 2008 and 2010, Otani expanded its business offerings to include radial tires for heavy commercial vehicles like trucks and buses, a business line that it still provides today, and building on this experience; the company began producing radial tires for passenger cars in 2017. You’ll be able to find several lines of Otani passenger car tires at local distributors like Walmart, where you can sometimes snag great deals through discounts, as well as at online retailers specializing in tires.

Advertisement

Overall, Otani is a great value-for-money brand that holds up well, though remember, you get what you pay for, so don’t expect a $50 tire to perform like a Michelin.

Delinte is a brand that aims to balance performance with price, and has passenger car offerings from about $50 to north of $500. However, it should be noted that the brand does have several other product offerings, including 20 passenger car tire models, five light truck models, seven commercial vehicle models, and even a “last mile delivery” model, designed to extract the maximum fuel economy from your vehicle (limited to urban and suburban terrain). To that end, the company manufactures tires that are specialized for every purpose you could want, from all-terrain units, to those specialized for mud, for rough terrain, for the highway, for SUVs, for crossovers, and more, all in a wide variety of tread patterns and wall sizes. 

Advertisement

The Bandit line of tries (all variants) are OHV-ready and can be used out of the box on off road trails, with all four Bandit models coming with an “F” rating for both towing and hauling. The Bandit A/T series also comes with an additional “mountain snowflake” rating that certifies it as usable, even in severely snowy conditions. Delinte is currently based out of Hialeah, Florida, and has a dealer network that spans the country, so if you’re looking for affordable, quality tires, you’ll probably find some nearby, or at least within a couple days’ delivery time.

The next brand on our list is the one that you’re most likely to have run into, called Cooper Tires. The full name of the company is actually Cooper Tire and Rubber Company, and this outfit, based out of Ohio, is actually owned by Goodyear — yes, the same company that once made glow-in-the-dark tires is now targeting the budget-oriented consumer. They’ve actually been around for a very long time, since before the first world war actually, having been founded in 1914 by two brothers-in-law, though back then they only made tire patches, tire cement and puncture repair kits. In 1919, another man started his own company, called the Cooper Corporation on a neighboring plot of land with the specific aim of making brand new tires for the automotive boom that was in full upswing at the time. 

Advertisement

Barely a decade later, these two companies merged with a third to form the Master Tire and Rubber Company, which would eventually rename itself Cooper Tire & Rubber Company in 1946, a name that has remained unchanged since. By 1960, Cooper Tires was a publicly traded company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and by the turn of the century in 1999, the company had 50 facilities worldwide. Today, that number is north of 65 facilities worldwide, which enables them to offer no less than 23 different tire models, from all-terrain tires to SUV tires to summer tires and everything in between.

Just like the Cooper Tire & Rubber Company that we introduced you to above, Douglas Tires is also a sub-brand of GoodYear, with the difference being that Douglas Tires is a Walmart-exclusive private label company. This means that you can only purchase a set of Douglas tires for your car at Walmart, and the only place to order them online is Walmart’s website. The company was founded in 1992, when the parent company, Goodyear, was rapidly expanding. It was designed to be an affordable entry point for customers who needed quality tires without spending hundreds of dollars. Today, that’s exactly what Douglas continues to do.

Advertisement

Most of their offerings, all of which can be found on the Walmart website, fall under the $100 mark, with the cheapest option currently standing at a very accessible $49. Add to that the fact that there is a wide variety of tire ranges offered, even though most of them are all-season variants and not really specialized for one use case, and you have a recipe that should fit most people looking to replace their tires without breaking the bank.

The second-last offbeat tire company on our list was actually the first Korean company to manufacture tires, and was started way back in 1941, starting out with a production capacity of only 110,000 tires a year. Today, their offerings will cost a little more than most budget lines, but you do get improved performance and durability for that price premium that you are being asked to pay. The company was founded right about the time when South Korea would have been undergoing its massive industrialization boom, and on their website they mention that they will conduct “tireless research” to define the global mobility industry. 

Advertisement

Today, Hankook Tires offers tires for seven different kinds of vehicles, which are EVs, passenger cars, SUVs, race-bred competition tires, light trucks, heavy buses and trucks, and “special trailer” tires — whatever those may be. Under the umbrella of Hankook Tires exist no fewer than nine tire brands, all of which fly under the radar, such as iON, Dynapro, Weatherflex, and Kinergy, to name a few, with offerings for all weather conditions, including all-season, summer, winter, and all-weather.