I used to be in favor of eurostars before cause of being cheap and for saving money. Used the stock city ones for 4 years and 46k kms. Once after an islamabad trip, the car started to vibrate like crazy and it turned out the the tyre was totally deformed due to high temps from motorway driving. Replaced it with the original spare eurostar and thought probably just a one off problem, but knew I was due for a replacement very soon. Had to travel again soon after and didn't had the time to change the tyres, but on the way back after chakri the car suddenly started vibrating like crazy, got out and took a look, another tyre had developed a huge tumor looking thing and was completely deformed. Had to travel back at 50kmh cause the spare was unfortunately the old deformed one, I was almost sure at any higher speed it will most likely burst. Thankfully I got back safely and got tyres changed the next day. Even though I didn't tell shopkeepers at first about this issue, many of them said euros have this issue, must be a common thing.
I got Falken ZE914 Ecoruns because it was the only reasonable tyre I found besides the es32 which seemed properly imported in Faisal town shops. The whole market is filled with smuggled tires and almost everyone there is a scammer. They are even putting fake sheikh brothers stickers nowadays, or even sheikh brothers are now using smuggling techniques to cram the containers with more tires.
Now for the comparison between the falkens and euros. The difference in grip and comfort is insane. Feels like I'm driving a brand new car now. The difference in grip is so high that there is a road in dha lahore which is so smooth and slippery that the euros even when brand new had a lot of wheelspin under reasonably hard acceleration, not clutch dump, just pressing the accelerator harder than usual in 1st or 2nd gear, but with the falkens I didn't even get wheelspin on that road when it was raining. Seriously it feels like these tires have more wet grip than euros have dry grip. It even went through puddles like a dream, while in euros either the car decelerates like crazy trying to displace the water in the puddles or aquaplanes. The fuel economy increased by 0.5-1kmpl as well. The car has dulled down a bit, euros with their no-grip are pretty lively to drive though, the only advantage they have.
I believe that anyone who says there isn't much difference between imported and generals either has experience with low end imported tyres or smuggled tyres. Plus as properly imported tyres usually last longer and provide better mileage, you will probably break even in the long run as well.
Some other points to note regarding euros, the city one developed dry rot within 2.5 years and 20k kms. The 195/65r15 euros in my corolla have fared much better though, they are now like 70-80k kms driven and 4 years old. They do have pretty bad dry rot and the rear ones are slightly deformed, but not nearly as bad as the city's. The tyre shop guys also say that the 195 euros are the only reasonable general tires, 175 euros, bg trakkos and bg luxos are worse and that's why 195 euros command more of a price premium in the market as well. General officially only rates their tires for 30k kms apparently.
My suggestion would be to either spend a reasonable sum of money on a properly imported good tire, if you can't spend that much, then euros are definitely a more trustable option than smuggled and chinese, smuggled tires seem to have the highest tyre burst incidents followed by chinese and then generals. Although there are some properly imported lower end brand cheaper options in the market as well, Kumho, Laufenns, etc 2020 manufacturing are there in the market for pretty cheap. But they usually aren't stored properly and have become hard. J.rashid faisal town had the laufenns and they seemed to have been properly stored and were pretty cheap at 9k per tire, chinese tire price for a hankook subbrand tire indonesian made sounds good enough to me. Pak punjab tire dha on fb message told me they got properly imported fresh tires recently and their prices seemed pretty reasonable, haven't checked them out yet to confirm if they are properly imported. Islamabad market seemed much less scammy when I visited a month ago, lahori markets are known to be the worst in pak for any item. Tyre point is probably the most risk free place to buy tires from, but they don't buy your tires so you would have to sell them separately which can be difficult as most shops only buy them so they can sell you something else in exchange.
Some things to do when buying a tire:
1- properly check the tire for any sidewall corner deformities, don't buy if there is even a slight deformity.
2- properly check online reviews, some imported tires are not good even if properly imported.
3- check very properly for the date codes, if you have even the slightest of doubt about the date not looking proper, abandon.
4- ask for official import proofs and invoices. even contact the importer through the dealer if possible. you can even use it for further negotiation as you might see the price difference between what the dealer bought at and what they are selling at.
5- if the tyre is not a fresh import, properly check if it has any dryness or hardness in the rubber, the tyre should look freshly imported if it is properly stored, and then there isn't even a big issue buying up to 2 year older tyres.
6- check every single tire properly, don't just check 1 and get 4.
7- go to bigger and more popular shops, they are less likely to be scammers. they would also have smuggled items but they would usually not try to sell off smuggled as imported.
