Review:
I had first generation Hankook Mileage Plus for 3.5 years on a Saturn Coupe which I bought used in April 2004.
It was a miserable size, 175/70R14 85s. Since they were nearly new (mid-'03 buil date) I decided to stomach them for a while and then replace them with something else if the car proved worth keeping.
Car was much tippier and more skitish compared to Saturns with 185 or 195. On the other hand, braking was MUCH better than the miserable Dunlop SP20 that came standard on basic Civics, Sentras & Focus those days (depite that being a 185) and in other performance terms no worse than most other tires would be in that size and spec.
Money woes caused me to keep it more than one year, and after two years I gained respect for the toughness and value of this product.
The Mileage Plus tires took incredible abuse. The Part of Toronto I worked 2004-2007 in was filled with lumps, folds, surprise-raised manhole covers and jagged potholes big enough to conceal a medium sized dog. (since than, this condition has expanded to the entire city...)
Furthermore, from 2005-2007 the last 1.5 miles approaching my office building were a perpetual construction zone glistening with unavoidable metalic debris, huge nails & screws, shavings and broken industrial drill bits.
During this time I was the ONLY driver at my workplace who did not need to replace at least one tire. Had to patch two of them, but didn't replace any.(most others lost a couple of tires).
In addition to the road hazzards and somewhat abusive driving style for wheich these tires were not intended, the sidewalls also survived mounting a curb sideways when a vehichle out of control on an icy hill nudged my rear end causing me to also spin on once and climb the curb with the passenger side tires.
Comparatively, one of the Toyo winter tires I had this year climbed the same height curb at much lower speed (parking lot island hidden by snow) and it caused a bulge in the sidewall and damage to mounting surface so it is no longer usable.
In terms of the rubber, it looked & performed the same for the first 2.5 years (about 40K miles) but then in the 3rd year I noticed diminishing winter traction on cold & damp pavement.
Came into some rims with AVID T4 in 195/60R14 which is the size I actually wanted, and bought winter tires for the steelies so the hankooks were retired until I sold the car with them last March.
Verdict: Wouldn't have been my first choice (although in a wider size they'd probably be better) but I liked the tire's survivability. Compared to other lower end tire's I've tried in simillar sizes, they were better than Dunlop SP20 & SP40, Goodyear Conquest, BFG Precept, Firestone FR390 and I certainly wouldn't have paid a dime more to have FR690, Control TA, Integrity, Ameri-GS4.
