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I found an article about tire stuff. It's a tad old, so the prices he has listed are probably off by about $300 or more, but the info is still good.
http://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/510/buy-tires
And here's the UTQGS site at safecar.gov.
http://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle+Shop...s/Tires+Rating
Feel free to impart what you know on the subject.
Pretty good info. For the most part, keep in mind that the ratings are done by the manufacturers, not the NHTSA, (unless that's changed since the last time I researched it) I've also found that tires, to me, are very vehicle and driver dependent. What works for one car may not work the same for a similar car. Driving habits and maintenance hugely affect how a given tire will work for you.
I rotate my tires every time I change the oil (6,000 miles) and typically run pressure based on the sidewall ratings, NOT the sticker on the door. The reason I say typically, is some tires have a max pressure of 35 psi or so. These work fine ant 32 psi. Most of my tires have max pressure ratings from 50-60 psi. On these, I keep them at 5 psi less than max. On my truck, I lower the back tires to 7-8 psi less than max (unless I have a load in the bed) I usually get quite a bit more tread life than the tires are warrantied for. My last set of Continental Extreme Contact DWS on my wife's car, I got 60,000 miles out of them. These are Z rated all season ultra high performance tires, with 50,000 mile warranty. YMMV
One thing I've learnt after nursing 3 cars to old age, is that you shouldn't scrimp on tires. Usually I can get near to 100,000kms (60,000 miles) out of tires before they're beyond use as long as they're rotated at regular intervals.
With 2 of the vehicles, I bought them used and in both cases, they had cheap budget tires from the previous owner. Fitting them with better quality tires upgraded the performance a tremendous amount.
If people would look upon tires as an integral part of the suspension, they wouldn't be likely to cheap out as much. if you could get the cheaper metal for the steering linkage, would you? No, that would probably cause a premature failure. Kinda the same with tires.
On my Nissan that I bought new in 1992, after 60,000 I bought performance tires to replace exactly what was there before -- Dunlop 195/55VR-14. They cost $800 in 1995 and they lasted 50,000 kms! They clung to the road like glue but didn't last.
And near the end of their life, way before it was indicated to replace them, they'd act REALLY scary in the wet. You'd be going around a corner, it'd grip...grip then decide OK, no more grip and sideways you'd go. Nothing linear, nothing forgiving.
After doing that, I bought a slightly less aggressive tire and they lasted about 90,000, and the tires after that lasted a little longer than that. (car has about 330,000 Odometer stopped working @ 310. I think I'm on my 4th set of tires for it!)