You think the Conti's had bad mileage, check this out

[joey]

I was at Big O tires today waiting for my car and this guy walks in and chats it up with the guy behind the counter. The two knew each other real well.
The customer tells the guy he is back for another set of tires, after 8k miles.

The two laugh about the poor tire tread life, and how the Mercedes are known for this.

Being curious, I went out into the parking lot and the car was a Mercedes AMG S55.
It had Sumitomo tires that were balding.
And we thought we had it bad.

[GoofyTimL]

Why would someone put such poor tread-life tires on such a nice car?

[Mr. iNCREDIBLE]

most MBZ's come with the Conti', curious about why this owner is using Sumimoto, and why he isn't smart enough to get better tires (oh right MBZ must recommend these and heaven forbid and MBZ owner use anything else).

that or he's too cheap or to broke to buy decent tires..

[CoolVSRT8]

or too stupid to realize hes got sweat shop made tires on his benz

[joey]

I talked to the guy for a minute. He said he had tried different tires and they all wore out in the 8k range. Also something about staggered and performance tires. He made it sound like 8k was normal for his car.

[ricardo]

this is what i say. it is all about perception. if such thing happens on chrysler then everybody says geeee look at these american cars... never again... when on benz ah... such a nice car.. they are known to have a quirk...

[CoolVSRT8]

Originally Posted by joey

I talked to the guy for a minute. He said he had tried different tires and they all wore out in the 8k range. Also something about staggered and performance tires. He made it sound like 8k was normal for his car.

im starting to wonder if he does burnouts every chance he gets man thats crazy talk 8k and tires are done? dang

[joey]

Originally Posted by Gucci300C

im starting to wonder if he does burnouts every chance he gets man thats crazy talk 8k and tires are done? dang

I heard him tell the store guy that he wasn't doing burnouts. They both just shrugged their shoulders and laughed it off as one of Mercede's quirks.
With synthetic oil, he could almost plan his oil and tire changes on the same visit.

[Mr. iNCREDIBLE]

see the thing is, that I have a customer I do side work for that has that same car.. he got 45K out of his OEM conti's and he replaced them with Michelin tires about 4 months ago. His is a 2005 AMG S55 as well.

Jason is a great guy but completely clueless about his car (he actually called me and paid me to come to his house to show him how the power seat worked because it was all the way up and he couldn't drive it comfortably), for him the car is a status symbol and nothing more, and he believes that all work must be done at a MBZ dealer, and that no one else is qualified to work on the car.. including oil changes, and washing it..

[joey]

Originally Posted by Mr. iNCREDIBLE

see the thing is, that I have a customer I do side work for that has that same car.. he got 45K out of his OEM conti's and he replaced them with Michelin tires about 4 months ago. His is a 2005 AMG S55 as well.

Jason is a great guy but completely clueless about his car (he actually called me and paid me to come to his house to show him how the power seat worked because it was all the way up and he couldn't drive it comfortably), for him the car is a status symbol and nothing more, and he believes that all work must be done at a MBZ dealer, and that no one else is qualified to work on the car.. including oil changes, and washing it..

I have no explanation why this guys car is eating tires. I even googled on poor tire wear on the amg s55 and nothing came up. The owner and the Big O guy were convinced it had something to do with the car. I looked at the rear tires and the outer edges were worn out more than the center. He had much wider tires than the tires in the pic, which are probably stock.
Maybe his problem is similar to the SRT8's which have been known to have unusual tire wear problems.