I am telling You guys DISCOUNTTIRE DIRECT.COM You can get Michelin Latitudes great all season tire

You must work for discount tires. IMO, Their prices are no better than other tire distributors.
In fact some are "more expensive".

@giodog2000, yes this is great or share our finding....i'm thinking of upgrading to 20" or 22" from my actual 19" either used with Mag or brand new tires and keep my 19" Budget $2k....keep me posted

not really just been buying tires from these guys for years, and I only had to pay for 2 sets........................

Ok Marc... Lets keep in touch via PM with our findings.

No issue at all with the Pirelli Scorpions, just that the X5 had Michelins with a tread compound that was developed together with BMW specifically for the X5. They worked very well for me. Sold the X5 with 70,000 km and the original tires had approximately 20% tread left. Pirellis on the X3 were replaced at 72,000 km and had enough tread to go 90,000.

MXV4. OE specific tread compound.

Don't know about a consensus, but my definition is a tire that has less money spent on design, testing, manufacturing, and quality control. Those are tires that are designed to compete at a certain price point. Nothing wrong with that, especially if you are selling a vehicle soon and just want something to keep the rims off the pavement. But install hundreds of tires in a general repair shop (not a tire dealer) and see which brands have more returns, which ones usually take more weight to balance, which ones the manufacturer stands behind more readily in the event of both warrantable and non-warrantable problems, which ones have tread separation issues, and which ones customers come back and ask most often for "the same as I have now" and you end up with a stratification of brands, with some higher than others. From my experience, I can't tell you the order from one to ten, but I know that the two I mentioned are often in the top 3. Results vary with tread, model, size, and use, but I believe that statistically, I am better going with one of those two. For winter tires, I also like Blizzaks. And I had a killer set of Dunlop Wintersport M3s, which I would buy again, but I don't have a large enough sample size to base a general recomendation on.

I can't comment on the advertising question; I don't recall any tire ads, except that Michelin has Bibendum. I am sure they all advertise, I just don't know who does more or less as I don't watch or read them.

So, who, what organization or how is someone able to discern which tires the mfgr spent less money spent on design, testing, manufacturing, and quality control?

You said " but I know that the two I mentioned are often in the top 3." Top 3 of what? Do you have a link to a study or review of X5 e53 tires? That would help to clarify what you mean.

I am referring here to brands, more than tire models.

I determined it for myself by monitoring returns, customer satisfaction, amount of weight required to balance, etc. Any other mechanic or service shop employee can do the same thing, if they sell a wide variety of tire brands and aren't tied to only one or a few brands. I have friends in the industry, who aren't tied to one or two brands. I ask their opinions as well.

It doesn't mean that every Michelin (for example) is better than every Kumho, but those in the industry will have a general sense of which brands are in their own top two or three, ie which are generally higher quality. Ask lots of those individuals, and you will find a few brands consistently in the top. That is my definition of the top three.

Coincidentally, those tires will generally not be amongst the cheaper tires around. I buy tires so rarely that I choose quality over price point.