Yeah, I would have gone for the Michelin Pilots too, but the overall for the value and $$$, I found the Dunlop Signature Sports to be best. Now with 1500 or so miles on them, they seem a great tire for the car. The snows in the North east this winter will be the final test.

Tracking.
 

Got it. The five boroughs of NYC seem like one big race track and
forget about their hand signals.

appbb: Your right on: OEM Goodyears lasted about 20k miles - at least 2 were worn down to the bars. I did rotate the tires every 5 k too. One thing I have noticed (I am probably much older than many here -59 years old), on some front wheel drive cars, the tires on the front axle wear much faster than the rears. It's the weight and other transaxle parts that cause the wear. Going forward for this Mazda. I'm going to rotate every 3k miles. I purchased my Signature Sport Dunlops at Mavis Discount tire. They rotate for free for the life of the tire. Oh yeah, if you read my earlier posts about the new tire damaged after 4 days of ownership, YOU will get the road Hazard Guaranty when you buy new tires. I tried to make a Purchase damage claim thru Visa - they denied the claim..... That cost me another $127 for the new tire. The dealer did now allow me to obtain the road hazard coverage for the other 3 tires and for the new one at $13 per.....The small sidewalls are softer than normal on all of these low profile tires - the coverage makes sense especially for that only $13 CHARGE.

To say that rotating every 3000 miles is excessive is an extreme understatement; even 5000 mile intervals is excessive and will buy you nothing as far as extending the life of your tires. Geez, I only rotate the tires on my Mazda3 every 15,000 miles and I'm on track to get 45,000 to 50,000 miles on my current set of tires (currently at the 32,000 mile mark).