JD Power’s 2026 U.S. Original Equipment Tire Customer Satisfaction Study documents overall satisfaction with original equipment tires as well as tire brand loyalty. By measuring how satisfied new-car owners are with their tires after one year and then two years, JD Power compiles data on several different tire-related issues to assemble this annual study, which originated back in 1989. JD Power puts out a wide variety of different vehicle-related customer satisfaction studies, including one that selects the automaker that leads customer satisfaction for mass-market car sales.
The JD Power U.S. Original Equipment Tire Customer Satisfaction Study rates tires in a variety of vehicle categories, including luxury, passenger car, performance sport, and truck/utility. It focuses on four different types of customer satisfaction regarding the tires that came with each car when it was new. These consist of the tires’ ride quality, how well the tires wear, the way that the tires handle and provide traction, and the visual appearance of the tires.
In the performance sport category, the winner was Michelin, which bested the other three tire brands rated in this category. Michelin posted a top ranking of 818 points, based on a 1,000-point scale. The competitors who trailed Michelin in this study were Goodyear with 805 points, Pirelli with 801 points, and Bridgestone with a low score of 768 points, which was way below the average score for the performance sport segment, which was 796 points.
Michelin dominated the awards overall
In addition to providing detailed information on how satisfied consumers are with their tires, the JD Power U.S. Original Equipment Tire Customer Satisfaction Study also includes data about the ways that consumers replaced their tires, how important the various qualities of their tires are to them, and the nature of any issues that they had with their vehicles’ tires during the period of the study. This JD Power study used information gathered from 38,244 owners of vehicles from model years 2023 to 2025, collected during the period from January 2025 to December 2025.
Michelin, which owns a total of nine tire brands, received the most awards of any tire manufacturer during the recorded history of the JD Power U.S. Original Equipment Tire Customer Satisfaction Study. In addition to also taking the win in the performance sport category in 2026, Michelin also won it in both previous years. For 2026, Michelin beat out all other tiremakers for the number of awards won, winning in three out of the four categories. Michelin took the top prize in not only the performance sport category, but also in the luxury category with 833 points and the passenger car category with 816 points. In the truck/utility category, Michelin placed third with 788 points, coming in behind Pirelli and BF Goodrich, a Michelin-owned tire brand which made a tire that changed off-roading forever.
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