I purchased a full set of FUTURA 2000 (Cooper Tires) 185/60-15 from PEPBOYS for my 2003 NEON SXT last year about this time, and have noticed an extreme change in tire traction. At present the tires have about 10K on them with over a 1/4" of tread still remaining, and have the proper 32 psi on all four tires.

Initially the tires had good traction in wet/snow conditions. However now that conditions are colder and wet, it takes little or no effort to spin these tires on acceleration or lock up these tires on braking, in fact while cornering at a local intersection at a very slow speed, the tires broke traction and I slammed into the curb. Even my wife has noticed a difference, and will only drive the NEON when dry conditions exist.

While I know that these tires are not the top of the line, (and you get what you pay for) they where rated well for all seasonal conditions, and I would think that this being their second season should still handle better than this! I'm neither a tire expert nor a molecular scientist, but these tires clearly exhibit that a change has taken place, and no longer grip the road when conditions are wet and cold.

Have any others experienced any issues with the FUTURA (Cooper Tires) brand? And no these tires were not listed in the recent recall by Cooper Tires.

I have sent a similar E-Mail to Cooper Tires and I'm currently waiting for a response to this new found anomaly.

I do not believe for a moment that I'll be getting a full set of replacement tires from Cooper Tires, so I'm currently looking at a set of Yokohama AVID TRZ's as replacements.

XFH