Shopping for new tires. Michelin has always made an excellent tire. Costco has their club exclusive Michelin X Tour. Looks like the Michelin Defender by all accounts. Several internet sites say it is the same tire. Michelin warranty is the same for both tires. Price difference is $3 (X Tour is $3 cheaper).
From what I’ve found online is the club exclusive tire is due to the volume that the club can command. The most logical reason I have found for the name change is to prevent price matching at a competitor.

I'm not sure a $12 difference per set is relavent here? I'd be a lot more concerned about the quality of the Mounting & Balancing work than a minor difference in tire price.

The primary criteria/prerequisite driving my decision is whether or not the installer has a Hunter 'Road Force' Balancer, period.

Make sure you check the date codes before you pull the trigger.

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Originally posted by SIGfourme:
Shopping for new tires. Michelin has always made an excellent tire. Costco has their club exclusive Michelin X Tour. Looks like the Michelin Defender by all accounts. Several internet sites say it is the same tire. Michelin warranty is the same for both tires. Price difference is $3 (X Tour is $3 cheaper).
From what I’ve found online is the club exclusive tire is due to the volume that the club can command. The most logical reason I have found for the name change is to prevent price matching at a competitor.

They're almost the same thing, tech & construction are equivalent. Michelin used to do that for Sears on the XC LT4 / LTX MS which has evolved into the Defender line. 2003-ish, a Michelin rep told me the construction of the LTX M/S & XC LT4 was identical - they changed the mold side-plates to change the name/design on the side. No way to verify he was correct, but he had no reason to lie.
And yes, it is mostly to prevent price matching BS, err, I mean 'brand recognition & separation'.
Firestone got bent over on the Ford Exploder deal, but they also removed some sidewall reinforcement on OEM vs retail tires to save $$. I don't think that's the case with retail house-branding.

Michelin has always been pretty honest with the UTQG rating - if it has the same rating, it's probably the same tire.
FYI - you can't compare UTQG between manufacturers, there are some internal criteria that make it apples & oranges. You can somewhat tell by UTQG + warranty - you can tell which manufactures are more 'optimistic'

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Firestone got bent over on the Ford Exploder deal

My brother bought an Exploder and got the recall, and they put on Michelins that lasted 150K miles. He never bought tires for that car and owned it for many years.

I just bought a new set of michelin crossclimate 2 at costco. The price per tire was within 3 bucks of discount tire. However the costco mounting, balancing, new 4 new TMPS sensors and other fees were a fair amount cheaper. So you might want to price the whole enchilada.

I buy a set of Michelin Defenders every year from Costco. They have been great tires for me. They get rotated every month.